The Strategic PMO

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.

  PMO   Portfolio Management   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

In the ongoing effort to link strategy with project execution, one entity can have a huge impact on an organization’s ability to achieve its goals and objectives — the strategic PMO. Here is an overview of an “up and out” approach that integrates groups and functions, dealing in the "currency" of relationships.

Only a few short years ago I was being asked whether PMOs had any future. Many organizations were frustrated that they weren’t getting the benefits they expected from the function (although many hadn’t defined precisely what those expected benefits were), and PMOs were being closed in great numbers. Of course, many PMOs were also being created because organizations who had previously closed them were realizing they were better off with them even if they didn’t know precisely why!

Fast forward to today and the importance of PMOs is not only better understood, their purpose and mandate is being formally defined and managed to. A large part of that has been driven by the increasing recognition of the need to connect project execution with corporate strategy. As projects focus more on benefit attainment and less on the triple constraint, so the discipline of portfolio management becomes more important, and PMOs are a natural home for portfolio management. The next challenge is ensuring the enterprise portfolio — those initiatives that directly …

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