PMO Setup Hurdles (& Solutions) in 60 Minutes

Hussain is the Chief PMO Coach and Adviser at Parwaaz Consulting, which provides coaching, support and resources to facilitate the success of Project Management Office (PMO) leaders at high-growth small- and mid-sized organizations. He has led and facilitated the PMO setup at several companies and advised numerous PMO leaders through their PMO establishment. He has authored several PMO-focused publications, speaks at PMI events and holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from The College of Wooster in Ohio.

  PMO  

Have you heard of #PMchat? It’s been around for five years and brings together an amazing community of project managers and business leaders on Twitter for an hour every Friday to talk about best practices on various project management related topics.

I’m always looking for ways to connect with PMO leaders, and this was a fantastic opportunity to have a chat about setting up PMO. I got in touch with founder Robert Kelly, and he was gracious enough to have me as a guest host in August.

We had a diverse, global representation of PMO leaders and project managers who were interested in learning new things about PMO implementation, getting insights from what’s worked for others and sharing their own experiences.

As expected, the conversation was focused on the hot-button themes of PMO setups: why they don’t work, and what strategies and tactics can be used to address them. Here were the key takeaways:

Hurdle 1: Lack of executive buy-in
Not being able to achieve buy-in, especially from executives and sponsors, is a core and common issue in setting up PMOs. This can often result in PMOs not being set up for the right reasons due to non-alignment on the influence of a PMO within an organization. Not having support from the sponsor can also lead to difficulties in getting …

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