Project Management

The Agile PMO: 3 Core Functions

Elizabeth is a freelance writer and project manager living and working in London. She runs The Otobos Group, a project communications consultancy specializing in project management.

More and more PMOs are supporting hybrid project delivery organizations. Some project professionals work on predictive projects. Others work with agile approaches. So how can one PMO support both waterfall and agile teams?

It can be done, but it takes a bit of thinking and planning, like any shift in mindset. And it’s definitely worth doing. You might know of teams that don’t have to comply to company best practices for managing projects because they are “agile” and therefore in some way special and exempt.

This approach causes issues. People don’t fully understand what those resources are spending time on, but they feel like they can’t get access to those individuals—even if they might be the best resource for the job.

Agile projects suffer setbacks and delays like any other project, and the delivery teams need to be able to report and justify that—and get help when it’s needed. There’s a lack of transparency, and enterprise reporting doesn’t feel so “enterprise” any longer because the PMO doesn’t have oversight of what’s going on in the agile parts of the business.

Traditional PMO functions look a little different when your PMO supports teams that work with agile methods. Below, we look at three core functions and how these need to shift when your teams and projects are using…


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