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).
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Luis BrancoCEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, LdªCarcavelos, 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. Saving Changes...
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.
Program Manager| HARPER SRLSanto 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. Saving Changes...
This is a much bigger challenge than “let’s put some governance in place,” and I think it is worth treating it as a strategic transformation in its own right.
The first question I would ask is: As @Kiron Bondale mentioned what kind of PMO are you actually trying to build, and what organizational problem is it expected to solve? A governance-heavy PMO, a delivery PMO, a portfolio/strategy function, and an organizational change mechanism require very different capabilities, operating models, sponsorship, and timelines.
One of the biggest risks is launching a PMO because leadership has been sold the idea that “we need a PMO” as the answer to a broad set of delivery problems. A PMO can create tremendous value, but it cannot compensate for unclear strategy, weak decision rights, lack of executive sponsorship, poor prioritization, or insufficient capacity.
In your situation, I would be especially careful about capacity. If the same three PMs are expected to continue leading major enterprise projects while simultaneously designing the PMO operating model, governance, intake, prioritization, reporting, tooling, roles, and adoption approach, that is effectively asking the same team to run the business and redesign the system at the same time.
I would treat PMO establishment as a portfolio initiative with its own charter, outcomes, roadmap, sponsor, capacity assumptions, and measures of success. Start with the minimum viable PMO capabilities that solve the most important organizational pain points, rather than trying to build the entire structure at once.
The strongest PMOs are not created by adding templates and ceremonies. They are built by being very clear about what decisions they improve, what friction they remove, and what enterprise outcomes they enable. Saving Changes...
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