Is there a IT industry guideline or benchmark that can be used to assess what percent of a vendor's quote should be attributed to PMO activities? We are considering a proposal from a vendor that would assume responsibility for managing a large portion of our maintenance and support activities. The vendor's proposal includes an allocation for PMO activities and I would like to see if this % is in the ball park. Or, is there a good source for these types of benchmarks? Saving Changes...
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Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Dear Anonymous, there is no such guideline. Ask your vendor for 10 references. Call each of them and verify that the guideline estimates that your vendor has given you are fair, accurate, and reasonable. There are a number of very good companies that provide maintenance and support solutions. You might consider allowing multiple vendors to compete for your business. Comparing the vendor proposals would also help to confirm your vendor estimates. Hope this helps. -- Mark Perry, VP of Customer Care, BOT International Saving Changes...
Douglas BrownBusiness Advisor| Decision Integration LLCAlexandria, Va, United States
I am sure this answer is way late. They are hard to find but you can pick off typical allocation of PM costs as compared to the total. I have seen as low as 7% for capital-intensive projects to as high as 12% for web-based projects (counterintuitive, but the idea is that there is a lot of customer interaction and it is all labor, minimal capital).
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Working in this space for over 20 years as a Programmes Director, seeing up PMOs and running PMOs for clients within global programmes has lead me to understand that the PMO cost is dependent on what programme(s) a PMO is servicing and the geog spread of the programme, the capital vs resource split, the risk of the programme to the business, the complexity etc...
We have developed over 5 years an estimation tool that assists clients to look at this costs and helps to predict the overhead required that inturn does save money,time on the cost of the actual programme.
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