The Thorny Subject of PMO Metrics

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.

  Estimating   PMO  

I hate talking about PMO metrics! It is one of those topics that comes up repeatedly whenever I do a speaking engagement, webinar or workshop that touches any aspect of a PMO. It’s something I get more emails and phone calls about than practically any other topic.

But that’s not why I hate it; I hate it because so many people and organizations have the completely wrong perspective of PMO metrics. So in this article, I get proactive and offer up some thoughts on the topic—and try to address some of those incorrect approaches head on.

PMO vs. project
When I talk to many people about the idea of PMO metrics, they are actually referring to PMO measurement of project metrics. That is, they want to look at project performance through the lens of the PMO and consolidate results across multiple projects, compare projects with one another, etc.

I understand why organizations perceive those metric comparisons as important (although I don’t believe they are—comparing very different projects based solely on performance against arbitrary expectations is fraught with danger), but that’s not the same as PMO metrics.

Let’s therefore start this exercise by defining exactly what we are referring to when we think about PMO metrics. These are measures that will provide an indication of the performance of the PMO in achieving its mandate. These…

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