PMO Successes and Failures

Ginger Levin specializes in the program, portfolio and OPM fields. She is a PMP, PgMP, an OPM3 Professional and a member of PMI's Registered Consulting Program. She received the Eric Jenett Award in 2014.

  Lessons Learned   PMO   Strategy  

Project Management Offices have been in existence for decades. At first, they supported single, large programs, such as the Supersonic Transport program in the late 1960s, which operated in a totally projectized structure.

Later in the late 1970s to early 1980s, PMOs began to be established to serve an entire organization. Continuing with an example from the Federal Aviation Administration, the administrator established one in 1982 to work across silos as it began the massive program of upgrading the U.S. National Airspace System. Then in 1996, IBM Chief Executive Officer Lou Gerstner set up its Center of Excellence for Project Management, which remains in existence and was followed by those in other organizations.

With the Y2K initiative, PMOs became a common entity in many organizations to help ensure all applications were converted successfully. Each year, many organizational executives set up a PMO as they recognize increasingly that programs and projects are strategic assets, and other organizational leaders dissolve the PMOs in their organizations.

For a PMO to be successful, it must demonstrate it has continued business value to the organization. To do so, the functions it is to perform need to be stated explicitly and communicated throughout the organization when it is first established. People at all levels then have a consistent message as to why it is being …

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