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Therefore PMO therefore assumes two key roles, depending on which needs of the organisation are being served:

• Tactical: The PMO provides direct support to projects in several areas such as scope management, baseline change management, project scheduling, resource management, cost management and project reviews. The PMO provides the information required for decision making and ensures that the decisions are being carried out.

• Strategic: The PMO supports the PPM framework, which in addition supports project prioritisation, performance management and benefits realisation (see Figure 13). The PPMT intersects with the executive stream, allowing the organisation to make strategic ‘go/kill/hold/fix’ decisions on key projects in the context of managing a balanced portfolio
of investments.

In summary, the PMO is the function responsible for coordinating, planning, overseeing and monitoring an organisation’s multi-project environment. Through the PPM process the PMO enforces executive accountability and transparency by connecting the organisation’s projects to the business’s portfolio strategic decision making stream. The information supplied by the PMO flows directly into the PPMT’s funding, selection, prioritisation and resourcing processes.PMOs are becoming a standard feature within many organisations and are viewed as the operational centre supporting any project within the business. They act as the clearing house for project information and the driving force for project delivery.

The main specific responsibilities of the PMO include:

Project management, control, delivery and alignment:

- monitoring project outcomes and communicating this up stream to the PPMT and down stream to project managers
- increasing communication and coordination across projects
- advising the PPMT on the benefits and status of projects
- advising and reporting on the placement of new and elimination of old projects
- endorsing, advising and supporting project managers
- confirming successful delivery and sign-off at the closure of the projects
- managing resource utilisation across the organisation, matching project needs with specialised skills and availability
- ensuring critical projects are on time and within budget by providing objective accountability and review at every stage, from initiation to closure
- using dashboards to enhance the roles of project and programme managers within the enterprise

Financial accounting:

- assisting project managers with budget control
- maintaining financial status reports on all projects
- analysing interfaces and critical cost dependencies between projects and recommending appropriate action
- maintaining a list of stakeholders and their financial interests

Project management support:

- providing a single point of contact for all project information
- training, coaching, guidance and mentoring
- developing and holding project templates and master copies of all project and programme information
- generating all necessary quality management documentation
- maintaining, controlling and updating documentation
- establishing and maintaining an electronic registry of project information for use by both the PPMT and project managers

Methodologies, standards and metrics:

- guardianship of project methodologies (for example, Prince2), standards and metrics
- compiling reports and collecting information from project reviews
- providing a central, customer focused office to care for the concerns of the client, sponsor and project stakeholders
- providing assistance to the PPMT in selecting and analyzing projects
- establishing consistent practices and standards for programme governance arrangements, including project planning, reporting,
- change control, analysing risks and maintaining and updating the risk register

Programme management is the process of managing multiple, ongoing, interdependent projects. The Programme Management Office (PMO) provides a layer above the project management process, focusing on selecting the best group of programmes, defining them in terms of their constituent
projects and providing an infrastructure whereby projects can be run successfully while leaving the job of delivery to the project management community.

The focus of the PMO is to coordinate and communicate on all programmes and projects in the enterprise, as well as to be the knowledge centre with regard to training, leadership, mentoring, best practice, project governance standards, and so on that supports managers in the implementation of the tasks and work packages required to achieve
successful project completion.

The PMO’s role within the business is not only to act as a knowledge centre, but also to help marry project management process with the executive streams by working closely with the PPMT. This relationship is designed to help the business to identify the precise measures that need to be taken in order to turn strategic goals into reality, as well as to determine the key performance indicators that show whether goals are being met.

The PMO provides the necessary overview and coordination to deliver projects on time and on budget by managing and reporting on schedules, risks, costs, quality, scope and resources across all projects. At the heart of a PMO is its relationship with the PPMT, the aim being to enable the business to coordinate and integrate complex multi-project initiatives across an entire enterprise. This partnership between the PMO and the PPMT is there to empower the executive decision making stream with the necessary information to help prioritise and balance project initiatives, justify decisions, measure risk vs return and allocate resources in a way that maximises their impact on the business.

One of the main issues when implementing a PPM process is that different layers of management within the business have their own territorial issues and oversights. As stated earlier, the PPMT consists of executives and senior postholders who are charged with responsibility for making all key decisions that affect the project portfolio.

The PMO provides the bridge that joins the operational stream with the strategic stream. The PMO is a body of senior project stakeholders and managers that has responsibility for managing all the business’s projects from an operational perspective as well reporting back to the PPMT on their outcome.

By centralising overall operational responsibility for all the organisation’s projects in the PMO, a complete picture of project activity can be painted. The PPMT is able to utilise the tactical structure of the PMO to collect all the necessary ‘coal face information’ to manage and evaluate the health of the business’s projects.

The formation of a PMO is not only designed drive top-down accountability; it also supports the complete operational framework for managing a multi-project environment. In effect a PMO is an information repository that provides the visibility needed to understand the health of ongoing projects and the potential impact of planned projects – and ensures that all projects are evaluated in the same manner. Without a PMO ‘knowledge centre’, executives and the PPMT are hindered in their ability to make the necessary collective decisions based on the right information.

What is the role of the PMO? What is its relationship with the Project Portfolio Management Process and Project Portfolio Management Team (PPMT) as well as the project management process? How can the true potential of the PMO be realised?

A project manager is a very different animal to the programme manager. However, the relationship within the business is designed to be mutually complementary. This is also true of the relationship between the PMO and the PPMT. Delivering complex programmes on time and on budget is a major challenge for any organisation. With diverse but interrelated projects, resources, and processes, conflicts are inevitable and success is often elusive. The biggest challenges facing most organisations today are
having the ability to know which of their projects are in trouble at any given time, and how they will get them back on track. With information and people so widely distributed, the critical ability to check project status and proactively identify problems can be next to non-existent. Moreover this is also compounded by disparate levels of project management knowledge, skills, abilities, techniques and methodologies from one business unit and department to another.

Disparate information and poor communication about project interdependencies typically result in:

• project delays: projects run late and do not deliver the desired results
• no standardised method: typically, many organisations have no centralised or enterprise-wide project management method, resulting in fragmented and ad-hoc compliance to project governance standards and procedures
• resource bottlenecks: key resources are chronically overscheduled and there is no clear method for project managers to get the right people for their projects
• out-of-control costs: redundant projects are occurring in different business lines and are costing the organisation more than estimated
• insufficient information: management has little or no insight into what projects are being undertaken, or how well they are being carried out
• no decision framework: projects are undertaken with little or no analysis, with projects having a strong champion or determined evangelist driving other possible investments out of consideration

Therefore businesses that want to improve project outcomes as well as provide critical project information for executives, or institute an analytical project decision process, are turning to the creation of a PMO – a means of managing projects within an enterprise environment.

Dear Readers,

I found an excellent article on the Value of a PMO from Project Steps.

For your convenience I have summerised the article below.

What Value can a PMO (Programme Management Office) Offer?

Establish and deploy a common set of project management process and templates. These reusable components save time by allowing projects to start-up more quickly and with less effort.

The PMO builds and maintains the PM methodology and updates it to account for improvements and newly discovered best practices.

The PMO facilitates improved project team communication by having common processes, deliverables, and terminology.

The PMO sets up and supports a common repository so that prior project management deliverables can be candidates for reuse by similar projects. This helps to save start-up time.

The PMO is responsible for PM training. This training helps to build core PM competencies and a common set of experiences. This PMO training helps to reduce overall training costs paid to outside vendors.

The PMO coaches project managers to help keep projects from getting into trouble. At risk projects can be assisted by the PMO to mitigate further issues and risks.

The PMO serves as a tracking mechanism for basic project status information and provides a common project visibility report to management.

The PMO tracks organization-wide metrics on the state of project management, projects delivery, and the value being provided to the business by project management in general, and the PMO specifically.

The PMO is the overall PM advocate to the organization. This could include educating and selling management on the value of using consistent PM processes, or as a liaison to other business centers to provide project management training and support.

One fact is clear from the research I have conducted, a PMO is critical when it comes to supporting sound project management practices. The larger the project the more project management (PM) can help to bring about success. It is readily accepted that good Project Management processes support:

A) Reduced Cycle Time and Delivery Costs
B) Improved quality of project deliverables
C) Early identification of project issues, budget, scope and risks
D) Reuse of knowledge and the ability to leverage that knowledge on future projects
E) Improved accuracy of project estimates
F) Improved perceptions of the project management organization by our partners
G) Improved people and resource management
H) Reduced time to get up to speed on new project