PMO creation parallel to PM enterprise projects

Governance Healthcare PMO

Anonymous

I am curious what resources or lived experience there is to share on establishing a PMO while simultaneously working on enterprise level projects?

I understand identifying the business need to establish the PMO and various types and phases for implementation. I have been greenlit to begin PMO development at my company, & us three PMs are continuing to work on enterprise level, large projects. I'm curious what the community has experienced on challenges and balancing the two efforts - the immediate project work while demand simultaneously working to build an effective long term structure (PMO).

Posted: Aug 13, 2026 7:45 PM

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Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal

I would treat establishing the PMO as a formal organizational initiative rather than as additional work to be fitted around the three PMs' existing projects.
The PMI Project Management Offices: A Practice Guide provides a useful structure for establishing and evolving a PMO, including understanding organizational needs, defining its purpose and value, establishing governance, and developing an implementation roadmap.

The harder issue in your situation may be capacity.
Being authorized to build a PMO is not quite the same as being given the organizational capacity to build one. If the three PMs remain fully committed to large enterprise projects, I would make explicit what capacity is being allocated to PMO development, what takes priority when the two compete, and who has authority to resolve those conflicts.

I would also avoid trying to build the complete PMO before it starts creating value.
Your current projects can provide an excellent evidence base and testing ground. Identify one or two recurring organizational problems the PMO should solve, develop the smallest useful capability that addresses them, test it through real work, learn from the results, and expand from there.

That way, you are not simply balancing project delivery against PMO creation.
You are using current delivery to inform the PMO while protecting enough capacity to build the longer-term organizational capability the company has decided it needs.

Posted: Aug 14, 2026 4:25 AM

Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada

A lot depends on what you mean by "PMO". No two are the same and the mandate of yours will dictate the level of effort required to get it off the ground. Setting up a PMO is a strategic project so you could look at it as the challenge of managing multiple concurrent strategic projects but you would also likely be playing a SME or key stakeholder role on the establishment so your involvement would be greater than on a typical project.

Kiron

Posted: Aug 14, 2026 7:33 AM

Lissette Indhira Pimentel Sosa

Community Champion

Program Manager| HARPER SRL Santo Domingo / Distrito Nacional, Dominican Republic

I'm currently working through something similar. One challenge is that project delivery will always feel more urgent, so PMO development can easily get pushed aside. What has helped is treating the PMO itself as an initiative, with its own priorities and incremental deliverables, instead of trying to build everything at once.

Posted: Aug 14, 2026 12:43 PM

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PMO creation parallel to PM enterprise projects

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