Is Your PMO Respected?

Is your PMO just expensive overhead, or does it provide services with direct benefits to your organization?

by Neal Whitten, PMP, Contributing Editor

LET'S FIRST DEFINE what I mean by a PMO. A project management office (PMO), sometimes called a project office, is a group of people that includes project managers whose mission is to support project managers in the successful launch, implementation, and completion of their projects. This includes performing any tasks that can benefit current or future projects. This mission can be interpreted narrowly or broadly, depending on the budget and overall objectives of a PMO.
Unfortunately, many PMOs are not well received or well respected across an organization. A PMO might be viewed by the organization it serves as simply being overhead, an expensive, bureaucratic fad consuming scarce funding and resources, and providing questionable or weak value based on its costs to the organization. Many times this is an earned reputation! But an ineffectual or unsatisfactory reputation can be turned around as the PMO takes on a plethora of value-added activities.
When a PMO provides services that have a direct benefit to an organization and its projects, a good reputation is inevitable. For example, look at the following starter list of services that a PMO can provide, and ask yourself if such a PMO would be welcomed in your organization.

• Provides well-trained and competent project managers to run key projects (see "Duties of the Effective Project Manager," PM Network, September 1999).
• Provides project management consulting periodically as requested.
• Develops, documents, and maintains project management best practices.
• Reviews contract proposals from vendors or from within the home organization.
• Sponsors project management education seminars and classes.
• Conducts project culture training (see "Change the Culture in Your Organization … Project by Project," PM Network, August 1999).
• Performs project reviews (see "Project Reviews-Looking Inside From Outside," PM Network, May 1999).
• Performs postproject reviews.
• Ensures that new projects are applying lessons learned (see "Are You Learning From Project to Project?" PM Network, March 1999).

The PMO has the responsibility for educating the organization it serves about the benefits it brings to projects, as well as the benefits it brings to the overall enterprise. A PMO must be able to defend its existence. It must create and track metrics that can show the results of its positive contributions. For example, a PMO should survey its customers, both internal and external, on a routine basis to verify that it truly is adding value, and the value is measurable and consistently improving.
The strength and reputation of a PMO rests first with the effectiveness of its project managers. For example, if the project managers are not receiving the proper training, coaching, and mentoring, they will likely be ineffective. If the project managers have a weak mastery of the needed soft skills, then they will likely be too soft to be sufficiently effective (see "The #1 Reason Why Project Managers Fail: Too Soft!" PM Network, December 1997). The effectiveness of project managers can be influenced by the support that they receive from mentors, one another, and the PMO support personnel (see "What Good is a PM Mentor?" PM Network, April 1999). The reputation of the project managers will directly reflect on the reputation of the PMO.

RESIST USING A PMO for implementing activities that provide questionable value to projects and, therefore, to the organization. Be aggressive in defining a PMO that boldly seeks to improve the overall success of the projects and the organization it serves (see "Boldness! You Cannot Be a Consistently Effective Leader If You Don't Have It," PM Network, January 2000). The respect your PMO receives over time will be the respect it earns.

Neal Whitten, PMP, president of The Neal Whitten Group (www.nealwhittengroup.com), is a speaker, trainer, consultant, mentor, and author in project management and employee development. His books include The EnterPrize Organization: Organizing Software Projects for Accountability and Success and Managing Software Development Projects: Formula for Success.

This material is reprinted from PM Network magazine (April 2000) with permission of the Project Management Institute Headquarters, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-2399 USA. Phone: (610) 356-4600. Fax: (610) 356-4647. Project Management Institute (PMI) is the world's leading project management association with over 50,000 members worldwide. For further information, contact PMI Headquarters at (610) 356-4600 or visit the web site at www.pmi.org. "PMI" and "PM Network" are trademarks of the Project Management Institute, Inc. © 2000 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved.

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