How Your PMO Needs to Evolve
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.
“The future xMO coaches and supports teams as they adapt to new ways of working. The goal of this coaching is to empower project professionals to maintain high standards and best practices as they create their own unique path to delivering value.”
That’s a quote from PMI’s new research report, produced in partnership with PwC, about The Evolution of PMOs. “xMO” is the catch-all term used in the report to reflect that PMOs are now sometimes being renamed to better reflect the diversity of roles that they are being given.
The sentiments expressed in those two sentences represent an exciting evolution of the PMO function, and there are quite a few elements in that quote that are worthy of exploration.
Coaching and support
Let’s start with the idea that future PMOs, under whatever name they operate, are going to be coaching and support functions. It’s not that uncommon today to find someone in a PMO offering support to a PM who is facing challenges on their project, or to coach a PM through a complex piece of work. But that work tends to be peripheral to the PMO’s responsibilities—not necessarily an informal or unofficial function, but certainly not core to the role.
Reimagining that work as a critical part of the purpose of the PMO serves to elevate the importance of sharing expertise, strengthening …
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