PMOs: Why Do You Care?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Organizational Project Management   PMO   Stakeholder Management   Strategy  

Anyone with any experience of PMOs knows there are multiple different models for the function. Every PMO is slightly different from even other PMOs in the same organization, let alone across different organizations. It’s therefore vitally important that PMO leadership has a thorough understanding of where the PMO’s accountabilities begin and end; without that, there is no way to ensure they are focused in the right areas.

This in itself can be a challenge; many PMOs exist in an environment of unclear purpose and inconsistent direction, so to understand accountabilities we have to start with that element.

Any “owner” of a PMO—the leader of the group to which the PMO reports—should be able to quickly and simply explain what the purpose of the PMO is, what its current priorities are (business plan) and what will constitute success (performance goals). Without that clarity, the PMO leader has very little chance of success (and really, it isn’t asking much to expect this level of clarity to exist—I can’t think of any other business function that exists without a clear purpose, plan and success criteria).

If your PMO lacks that clarity, then I would seriously suggest you stop reading at this point. Okay, perhaps keep reading…but don’t try and do anything until there is a common understanding of what the PMO&…

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