Wayne BroichEnterprise IT Strategy and Planning - GPMO| General MotorsPinckney, Mi, United States
Compatriots - My Company has taken the leap into creating a PMO office. I have been assigned the task to develop the required templates, forms and checklist to assist Program / Project mangers in communications to the various levels of stakeholders. Immediate need is a requirement definition template, Project Charter and a approval form for moving into the next phase. I have contacted my local PMI chapter for assistance. Any help or insight would greatly be appreciated. Saving Changes...
Michael BrownProject Manager| JPMorganChaseDeerfield, Il, United States
I'd also suggest the book "The Project Office" by Tom BLock. It's a very short but very information-packed book on how best to construct a Project/Program Management Office. Saving Changes...
John ZacharProduct Dev Manager| Association for Project Management (APM)Brackley,, Northamptonshire, United Kingdom
Be very careful not to let your 'new' PMO (or PSO or whatever it is called) turn into a 'policing' office. Supporting the various managers (whether project / programme / or portfolio is immaterial) is paramount. If you do let the PMO / PSO become a policing funtion ("Why haven't you done a properly completed business case yet? I'll tell on you!") it will fail due to unco-operativeness of those it is supposed to support. Saving Changes...
John is right. Don't let PMO office become a 'policing' organization. Any good PMO/PCO organization has to rembember 4 things.
Cost - get the cost analysts to say just what it is going to cost or at least a current best estimate.
Schedule - Get the proper realistic targets from the customer. If the customer doesn't have a target get a new customer.
Technical - get the engineers to lay out the tasks and if they don't lay out the tasks right the first time they shouldn't be engineers.
Managment - if they can't police the cost/schedule/technical aspect of the project they souldn't be managers.
If any of these four aspects of the PMO/PCO offices environment are missing or defective, run like hell to the nearest unemployment office. Saving Changes...
Todd WethyProgram Manager| Volkswagen of AmericaAuburn Hills, Mi, United States
As already mentioned, a PMO should be developed to support the projects/programs in an organization in terms of cost, schedule and quality. Quality includes the charactristics of the "product" as well as the characteristics of the "project". The role of this quality assurance typically falls to an entity that is external to the process development entity (i.e. the PMO). This structure helps prevent the "fox watching the henhouse" situation. Saving Changes...
Leman TurkogluProject Management Consultant,Trainer| CONGURU Training & ConsultancyIstanbul, Türkiye
We are in the process of implementing a Project Office after the completion of a planning project which took 6 m²nths) where we defined all templates, procedures etc.. I believe planning is good, however you always encounter the real issues during implementation. I suggest that you design templates that are easy to implement in your company. Company culture is the most important factor to consider. Please provide me feedback if you know an address for a skills inventory for the 'Project Office' employees. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
I would suggest that you outsource a few contractors and practice web-based project management. See PPC-Corp.com. Saving Changes...
Folks; I am in the same boat as Wayne. Just starting up a PMO for a start up company with projects and work being outsourced for the most part. Any good sources of information would be appreciated greatly.
I will have a "War Room" and about 15 projects of significant size to start with.
Any experiences or information would be great.
Thanks ahead of time. Saving Changes...
Todd WethyProgram Manager| Volkswagen of AmericaAuburn Hills, Mi, United States
Does anybody here know of a fully designed Project Management Capability Maturity Model? I read an article here on gantthead (PMOs: Projects in Harmony) by Sean Bohner that I thought was very well done but there wasn't enough detail to really leverage the content. Is the PMI looking into something like this? Is anybody else? Saving Changes...
