PMO 2.0: Resurrecting A Failed PMO

  PM Network  

For thousands of years, philosophers the world over have wrestled with the question: Is there life after death?

In the case of a project management office (PMO), the answer is a resounding “yes”—with plenty of opportunities for second chances. PMOs are an increasingly common part of the organizational landscape. The PMI 2012 Pulse of the ProfessionTM report found that 67 percent of organizations surveyed have a PMO, up from 63 percent the prior year.

But will they last? Three-quarters of PMOs fail within the first three years of being launched, according to Forrester Research.

Mario Henrique Trentim, PMI-RMP, PMP, PMO manager at the Institute of Aeronautics and Space in São José dos Campos, Brazil, hasn’t seen a PMO truly disappear, but he has seen one reborn.

“I’ve been part of a failed PMO,” he says. “Although it didn’t die, it starved and lost power along the way, and fell into discredit.” He says that project teams didn’t understand the PMO’s role, seeing it as a controlling structure rather than something that could help them with their projects.

Resurrecting it required unifying strategic planning by putting portfolio management and project management into one organizational structure, he says. The end result was a strong corporate PMO that acts as a portfolio …

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