What Organizational Level Should Program Office Be Established?
Anonymous
I work for a software firm that has established a Program Office specific to the Development business unit.
For those of you functioning as Program Managers, or those engaged with a Program Office, has the Program Office been established/functioning at the "Corporate" level (e.g., reporting to COO or Executive management team), or at a "Business Unit" level (e.g., specific to Development, Consulting, HR, etc.)? Saving Changes...
As high as practical, since, if most "business unit" functions are probably involved as players in most projects, you want sufficient influence to guide practices for "management by project." Saving Changes...
John ZacharProduct Dev Manager| Association for Project Management (APM)Brackley,, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
Having just run two PSO Workshops in London last week, I'm not sure the previous contributor is correct. Certainly when a PSO is mature, placing it as high in the organisation as possible is exactly right. But you can't start there.
Starting places are really dependent on two tings - first who is driving the need for the PSO - is it departmental or corporate. Wherever the demand is coming from is where it should start, but migration to a corporate level should be the goal, but it may take some time (up to two years) to get there is starting at a department level.
You can't start with a fully fledged PSO either - it won't work. First goal should be to establish relevant control so that the 'demand' from the executives can be satisfied for information to make decisions and provide some level of predictability. Once that need has been satisfied, then you can begin the process of satisfing the 'supply' side, where the project informaiton comes from. Typically this is in terms of knowledge, methodology and assistance. When a PSO get here I call it a guidance PSO - guilding not only those working in the programme and project, but those to whom the information is being supplied - sponsorship education if you want.
Eventually you could get to a partnership position where the PSO is at a very senior level providing high value to the whole of the organisation - both the demand side and the supply side. My experience suggests that if you are starting from zero, then to get to a control level is probably nine months, to a guidance level is probably avout 18 months, primarily driven by the need to modify the culture, and to get to partnership about 24 to 36 months, maybe longer - allowing for further cultural evolution. Hope this helps.
It is worth remembering that there are many different types of PSO / PMO, with differing responosiblities. Project support is substantially different than programme support for example. Saving Changes...
Depends on the maturity of the PM processes in the organization and also the type and size of organizational structure.
What works best is a PMO at the corporate level, which has enough autorithy to implement general policies and procedures across the whole organization Saving Changes...
