Our organization is forming a PMO. Through my reading on this site, I found something that stated about some PMO's perform project management activities while others perform project reporting. Can somebody please tell me what the difference is?
PMO's are evolving, or becoming more emergent.
There is a trend that a "true" PMO should
- Maintain and report project on a high level related to the business strategy
- Career office for PMs, develop and Maintain skills and competencies
- Avoid and mitigate risks
- Planning an management of resources and capacities across projects.
PMO's are/can be centres of excellence and you need to assess the right level which fits into your organisation, you can in an enterprise have several PMO's or one.
Defining the PMO is also a matter of how mature the organisation is - and perhaps more where you want to be - in lets say 2-3 years.
So you will find different objectives for existing PMO’s - some as mere reporting and project tracking/status centres and others who are much more focused on the PM profession and who are managing the project model, managing programs and portfolios, developing PMs from junior PM to Snr through a career path.
The modern PMO supports and coordinates the Governance of projects, overlooks the investments, conducts project audits and manages across and up in the organisation.
Monitoring of RFPs and Project candidates aligning with the business strategy and ensuring that the right projects are good to go and especially recommend the projects which projects should be terminated.
I hope this gave you some more ideas regarding your PMO - but perhaps not the exact solutions you are looking for :-)
take care
Kasper
Saving Changes...
Evan SandersProject Manager| Health CatalystUt, United States
If you are trying to decide whether your PMO should be focused more on project reporting activities or more on the management of projects, you should assess what problems your company is trying to solve through the formation of the PMO. If the problems relate to a situation where there are currently many projects being executed, but with little visiblity across the whole portfolio of projects, you would lean towards and project reporting and governance role for the PMO. If the problems relate to a situation where project management isn't happening enough or isn't happening very well, then you would probably be better off using the PMO as a central group for managing projects. Of course, there is middle ground between these approaches, and you can even take on multiple roles. I have found that PMO's do tend to succeed more often when they clearly define their goals at the outset, and are confident that those goals correspond to the most visible problems in the company. Saving Changes...
Laura KreofskySr. Advisor/Consultant| Impact AdvisorsPortland, Or, United States
On a related note, my client with a central PMO, is struggling with the question of should PMs report up through the business/service line or to/through the PMO up to the appropriate levels of management.
Any perspective on the pros/cons of these two approaches? Saving Changes...
The main advantage, I believe, of having project managers report to the PMO is that it gives them a common professional "backbone". It is a good approach if you want to establish consistent standards for project management.
The risk is that the project managers get disconnected from the business units they serve. In extreme cases, the PMO can become caught up in paperwork and procedure, and become ineffective.
The main advantage of having PMs report to the business units is that they usually remain more focused on business-relevant results. The problem is that they might use completely inconsistent methods and project management standards.
Which is better? It depends on the objectives of the organization and senior management. I have seen both methods in use. Sometimes either one can be a disaster or a huge help.
