Deborah WhitisInterim Director of Facilities Business Support Operations| Alamo CollegesSan Antonio, Tx, United States
All too often the only mention of project management makes reference to the IT organization and leaves little discussion on the project management that occurs on the functional (business) side. Why is that? Is there anyone out there that has experience with the development of a PMO on the business side of the house? Saving Changes...
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Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Here I am. Including the organization where I am working today. I can write about different implementations of this type of architectures. The architecture I often helped to implement is following the enterprise architecture layers: business, applications, technology, security, information. We have one PMO for each layer most of the time. And there was an Enterprise PMO (EPMO) that is the highest unit inside the whole architecture because all other PMOs report to the EPMO. Saving Changes...
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
I like that idea, Sergio. It's like Zachman PMO. Of course, PepsiCo is a pretty big organization. It would be tough to have that many PMOs in small- and medium-sized businesses. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Yes, you right Stephane. So, for any other type of organizations (including the big once I have no opportunity to work and did not take that model) I said: the PMO is allways a buisiness PMO. The problem is most of the organizations think about to implement the PMO as solving a specific problem which is created because a lack of process instead of to implement a PMO for stategic reasons. The PMO is allways a business PMO becuase all initiatives are related to the business. An initiative is started to put the strategy into action because strategy is the way the organization answer to environmental stimulus by creating something and the mean to do that is a project. So, the most effective PMOs are those which focus is to integrate all components needed for each initiative. And we need to take into account something critical: an organization or company usually has more than one business defined into it. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
When the organization decides to create a PMO its not right to say "hello, we will create a PMO". The path is: 1-define business functions. Business functions will be the mean to answer environmental stimulus. 2-define business process from business functions. 3-define key process areas where the buisness process will be located. For example: project management. 4-define the business unit that will support the key process area. For example: project manageent office. 5-assign the key process are to the business unit. That is the way. That is the way where you are creating something from strategy. That is the point where you will decide if a PMO (a buisness unit) has to be created or not. Saving Changes...
Thanks Sergio. When we hear statistics such as "50% of PMOs close within 3 years", I have to think that the lack of strategic reasoning for why the PMO was setup in the first place would be to blame most of the time Saving Changes...
