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Alan, I've been in a similar situation, although it was for a healthcare tech company.
My advice would be to resist the temptation to build a full PMO all at once. When you're the only PM supporting a growing organization, every hour spent creating governance is an hour not spent delivering projects.
Instead, focus on building a few foundational capabilities:
- A simple intake process. This doesn't need to be sophisticated. Start with a standard project request form that captures the business problem, expected outcome, sponsor, timeline, and estimated effort. The goal isn't bureaucracy—it's creating visibility into demand and preventing work from arriving through hallway conversations, emails, and Teams messages.
- A single portfolio view. Create one place where leadership can see every active initiative, status, major risks, key dependencies, and project health. Even a simple spreadsheet can work initially. When executives can see all work in one place, prioritization discussions become much easier.
- A lightweight governance cadence. Consider a monthly or biweekly portfolio review with key leaders. Focus on project approvals, prioritization decisions, resource conflicts, and escalations. One of the biggest challenges for solo PMs is being forced to absorb organizational prioritization decisions that should be made by leadership.
- Standard templates and repeatable processes. Create a basic charter, status report, RAID log, and project closeout template. Every hour you spend creating a reusable asset today saves hours of effort across future projects.
Once those pieces are in place, start tracking demand versus capacity. If leadership can see that one PM is supporting 8-10 concurrent cross-functional initiatives while new requests continue to arrive, the conversation about additional PM resources becomes much easier because it's supported by data rather than opinion.
One lesson I learned is that PMOs are rarely built through a large upfront effort. They usually emerge incrementally as solutions to recurring organizational problems. Solve the highest-friction problem first, then build from there.
Out of curiosity, who currently prioritizes projects across the organization? That's often the first place I look when trying to establish a scalable project delivery model.
Does the organization have any tooling in place that you can leverage today? For example, Smartsheet, Microsoft Project, Jira, Monday.com, ServiceNow, or even SharePoint? Sometimes it's easier to build lightweight processes on top of existing tools than introduce something new.
How are new projects currently initiated? Is there a formal request process, or do most projects originate through leadership conversations and emails?
Do you have executive sponsorship for building PMO capabilities, or is this something you're trying to establish organically while managing active projects?
Are you primarily managing technology projects, operational initiatives, acquisitions, regulatory/compliance efforts, or a mix of everything? The answer can significantly influence how I'd approach building the foundation.
When leadership asks for status across all active initiatives, how do you currently provide that visibility?
Do you feel your biggest constraint is lack of process, lack of visibility, lack of prioritization, or simply lack of capacity?
