06 Nov

Having an effective Project Management Office (PMO) within your organisation.
By:   Dave Newland

APS have come across many organisations where the PMO are seen as an administration function and not adding value to an organisations change function in the manner it could if set up appropriately.

APS highlights some of the real life examples we have encountered:

  • The Central PMO and Federated PMO not aligned or talking to each other
  • Inconsistent governance and reporting across projects / portfolio as no standards are followed to ensure quality
  • Project Management and non delivery not being monitored appropriately to assure quality of delivery and/or on going improvements being driven
  • Unable to determine and provide confidence if the Project data being reported is accurate and correct
  • Roles & Responsibilities across PMO, PMs and BAs not defined and monitored
  • Critical path plans across portfolios unable to be produced (inter project dependency mgt with critical path)
  • Business / Stakeholders not engaged and unable to make genuine informed judgements on projects
  • The change function is unable to allocate PMs / BAs correctly (bench management).

Most organisations are at an early stage of PMO maturity and to move your PMO into a Portfolio or Enterprise level PMO, this requires significant change and investment with “time” to change behaviours.

Some quick wins APS have implemented previously to support your PMO to be adding value are:

  • Provide clear roles and repsonsibilities across all change resource including Project Managers, Business Analysts and PMO
  • Identify staff across your organisation, trusted and highly respected people and they are brought into the new operating model
  • Create monthly / quarterly meetings across your PMO to drive a community and best practice models, track progress so improvements can be championed and highlighted across the organisation

Lastly to move your PMO to a Portfolio or Enterprise level PMO, the delivery oversight processes require strong governance, participant accountability and relevant metrics that are bought in from the very top of the organisation.  Ongoing communication across the organisation and education is required to ensure improvement and most importantly cultural acceptance.

Its a long journey improving your organisations overall delivery / governance and APS have the experience and consultants to help you along the way.