10 reasons why a pmo is so important - the project group · 1. increasing the level of project...
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10 Reasons Why a PMO Is So Important
CONVINCE YOUR DECISION-MAKERS OF THE BENEFITS OF A PMO
This document will provide you with arguments for a Project Management Office (PMO). What makes a PMO able to ad-vance project, portfolio and resource management (PPM) at your company? You can use the following arguments to persuade the decision-makers. But this list is not intended to be exhaustive.
Watch out: There is no such thing as the one PMO! Its tasks can vary from company to company. There are no universal standards for PMOs. The significance of the tasks can differ depending on company and industry. Hence, the order of the following arguments is of little importance.
1. INCREASING THE LEVEL OF PROJECT MANAGEMENT MATURITY
A PMO can be the central office for project, program and portfolio management. Its tasks can include establishing methods, processes, and in-house standards. The ensuing higher quality will entail a higher PM maturity level of the company. Both will result in savings through more efficient and successful project handling.
�Goal and Benefit: Savings through more efficient and successful project handling.
2. DEFINING INTERNAL STANDARDSDevelop your own internal standards. This can reduce the overall effort for project, program, portfolio and resource management. Begin by defining at what point a project becomes a project. You will avoid misunderstandings. Be-sides, standards make projects easier to compare, e.g. by way of standardized project reports.
�Goal and Benefit: Fewer misunderstandings between stakeholders and easier comparability.
3. SUPPORT FOR THE DECISION-MAKERS THROUGH PROJECT PORTFOLIO
The PMO can support the decision-makers in ensuring that the project portfolio is aligned to corporate strategy. It can do this by preparing the decision-making basis and the prior-itization. Good preparation will ease decision-making for the steering committee and top management. The result will be purposeful and situation-dependent decisions.
�Goal and Benefit: Substantial support in decisions on the project portfolio.
4. SUPPORT FOR THE PROJECT MANAGERSA PMO can support project managers in performing administrative tasks. For example, project controlling or project staffing. Thus, the PMO is actually the project managers’ friend. As a result, project managers can look after more important aspects of the project, which they cannot delegate.
�Goal and Benefit: Relieving the project managers of administrative tasks.
(S)PMO, PMO and PO are the 3 main types of a PMO
5. FURTHERING THE COMMUNICATION
This may be one of the most important tasks of the PMO: Leveling the playing-field for communication in the project environment. This regards the creation of regular meetings. And establishing who is to talk to whom. And about what. The PMO should prepare each of these meetings well to ensure smooth and efficient running. Afterwards, it should take care to communicate the decisions to all levels.
�Goal and Benefit: Supporting meaningful communi-cation in the project environment.
6. DEVELOPING THE RESOURCES
The PMO may be in charge of the (strategic) training of the staff working in project management. This includes organ-izing, and possibly also performing, training sessions con-cerning methods and tools. The training ensures a largely consistent understanding and the necessary skills among the staff, which advances the PM culture (see next point). Furthermore, it provides the resources with the necessary skills for future projects.
�Goal and Benefit: Good preparation of staff for pro-ject environment and tasks.
7. ADVANCING PROJECT MANAGEMENT CULTUREA project management culture at the company can be crucial to project success. It helps stakeholders to com-monly understand and live the individual processes and methods of the project environment. The PMO can be the central office introducing such a culture to the company, harmonizing and advancing it.
�Goal and Benefit: A consistent PM culture at the company smoothes the processes.
8. LEARNING FROM EXPERIENCEIt is possible to learn from the successes and mistakes of the past. A knowledge base containing all experiences can help. Additionally, certain stakeholders can track and later discuss the projects success or ways to improve as “lessons learned”. The PMO can be the central office where such data and project documentation converge. It can make sure this data is easy to access and reusable.
�Goal and Benefit: Future projects benefit from ana-lyzing past experiences.
9. PROVIDING TOOLS AND INFRASTRUCTUREAs a rule, the PMO is responsible for providing the tools for the project management environment. This is not only about choosing, purchasing, and maintaining the tools. The responsibility also extends to training the staff. User acceptance of the tools plays a vital role. Hence, the PMO has to take it into account when choosing them.
�Goal and Benefit: Suitable PM tools employed prop-erly will increase project success.
10. INCREASING EFFICIENCYA PMO can help to keep a project running. It can also ensure a faster implementation of decisions. This can also cut costs and raise the quality. Increased process reliability and project support save time. For instance, they speed up decisions due to up-to-date and well-pre-pared data. In dynamic markets, this can be the essential reason for project success.
�Goal and Benefit: The right PMO support results in more efficient project handling.
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OUTLOOK ON THE PMO OF THE FUTUREThe five theses below show how the tasks of the PMO might change in the future, as does the figure below:
1. The PMO of the future is the central hub of the enter-prise regarding project management.
2. In the of business hierarchy, the PMO is close to top man-agement. The focus is on strategic project management.
3. The growing complexity of projects leads to a higher coordination effort.
4. The PMO of the future conbributes by coordinating the projects’ resources. Those resources are becoming more and more international due to globalization.
5. Existing operational support tasks of the PMO decline with the growing degree of automation. For instance, project report generation will no longer be a manual task.
The changed tasks of the PMO in the future: grey = present state / red = expected development
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