Richard HowProgramme Management Consultant| How Associates LtdHarthill, South Yorkshire, United Kingdom
I have taken over a Programme Office in an organisation that seems to view the PMO as an overhead that runs an admin task. The PM's dont report into the PMO and I currently have no resource to provide project support with. Theres no standard project governance and no formal project methodology in place. Reporting is seen as an admin task not a governance thing.
I am putting together a plan to get the following in place
1) all pm's prince 2 trained
2) standardised reporting that will be audited for accuracy
3) project support from the PMO
4) Project govenance to control time, cost and scope creep.
what I need to do now is improve the profile of the PMO and to get the PMO taken seriously by the top managment to give me the momentum to roll this across the organisation and to get the organisation to treat the PMO as more of an authority and less of an admin overhead.
Anyone have experience of doing this and feel like giving me some pointers? Saving Changes...
James DobsonOperations Manager| Synapsys NZChristchurch, New Zealand
I can suggest the following:
1/ Implement a PR campaign of sorts focussing on successes due to input from the PMO but also focussing on examples of issues that could have been averted had the PMO been stronger (i.e. how could the following have averted crisis(es) in your org - consistent & consolidated reporting, better project prioritisation, enhanced visibility of flawed projects, better resource allocation etc etc) Any textbook should give you examples of the benefits of a strong PMO so take these and apply to your organisation. Think carefully about how you do this tho as different methods will apply depending on company culture/environment (I tried this internally and found the stealth method to be preferable to shouting from the rooftops!)
2/ Use examples of organisations similar to yours (especially competitors) that have acheived success through the use of a strong PMO or through using outputs that could be provided by the PMO
3/ Try and get buy in on an informal level from key personnel within your organisation. It's always helpful to have an advocate from on high so do some informal canvassing.
4/ Ensure your PMO processes are actually adding value - being too bureaucratic is a common complaint so make sure you have a pragmatic approach and aren't seen to be putting barriers in place - rather enhancing Project outcomes
