The PMO: Your Partner for Excellence and a Major Change Champion

Nicolas De Dobbeleer, M.Sc., PMP, is the managing director of The Project Gold Mine, a consulting company focusing on organizational performance that is based in Belgium.

  Change Management   Governance   Organizational Project Management   PMO   Portfolio Management   Strategy   Knowledge Shelf  

The PMO (portfolio, program, or project management office, depending on the scope covered and maturity of the organization) has become a fairly common function within organizations over the last ten years. Five years ago, in another article, I discussed how a starting PMO could develop a project management culture in organizations with low maturity in this area. In this environment, initiatives come from the bottom-up, with limited support from top management to deploy project management.

This article will provide some additional guidelines on how to position the PMO as a partner to top management to reach its vision of business excellence and help drive the necessary changes on this path.

For an organization to reach excellence, it needs several key components which are covered in our Performing Organization best practices series (De Dobbeleer, 2013, 2014a, 2104b). Top management obviously needs to strongly support the necessary changes, but somebody needs to follow-up and make it a reality. The PMO can significantly contribute, especially in the area of strategy execution.

In this article, we will focus on five guidelines that should help make your strategy execution a success:

1. Establish a strong governance to allow effective portfolio management
2. Align departments with different cultures
3. Ensure the PMO has sufficient authority
4. Find the…

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