Howdy! Just emailing to introduce myself, my name is John and I work for a ConnectWise based MSP of about 15 - 20 employees.
We're a small shop looking to expand in the future and I'm currently tasked with building a PMO for my company. The challenge is there is no single Project Management philosophy that matches an MSP exactly. So I'm looking to reach out and learn how other MSPs currently do it. I've been managing projects for my company for about 1.5 years now and am mostly making it up as I go along with some usage of PMBOK fundamentals.
Mass Workstation replacements for the entire office
I'm also looking at various different software to help me get some visibility into how our team performs. We are a ConnectWise shop so integration is highly desired. A few pieces of software we use:
ConnectWise
BrightGauge
TopLeft (Trial)
I've written up project guidelines and have templated the above projects but I still can't help but I feel I'm either not making the most use out of ConnectWise or is there is something missing (software, process or otherwise).
I'm writing this to reach out to see if there are any other Managed Service Providers in the PMI community who feel confident in the way they manage their projects. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
John
I have no experience with ConnectWise but some with MSP as I worked for IBM some years ago, also selling MSP contracts. We were supported by PMOs, but MSP was just a project type.
A PMO in my view is neither much build on which SW you use or sell nor which kind of industry you are in. A PMO serves to solve problems with projects and provide benefits to the company.
You are mentioning visibility into team performance, this might describe a problem a PMO could tackle - visibility. Many PMOs run the portfolio management process of project selection and monitor portfolio health, including project health.
You are also mentioning integration, another typical PMO function. Other typical problems are ratio of troubled projects too high, requiring executives to spent too much on escalations, or resource alignment.
So, I would recommend you look into general PMO setup, you will find ample documents and support.
