I convene a forum of senior managers who lead project-based organizations. Recently this group shared their experiences about project management offices (PMOs). Here’s an excerpt. I hope it gives you some ideas you can take action on.
Question: What factors have been critical to the success of PMO’s that you’ve established or led?
- Be flexible with processes and methodologies. Make sure they reflect the project, especially its size.
- Build trust. Make sure the organization trusts you and the PMO and sees it as a source of accurate, unbiased information about projects and their status.
- Be part of strategy conversations, especially from the execution perspective. Your PMO is probably going to have some responsibility for execution of initiatives.
- Get appropriate authority. You should be able to make decisions about how execution is being done and what their relative priority of work is.
- Have a good intake process. Define and communicate how proposals come into the PMO and how projects are evaluated and prioritized.
- Insist on a good scope definition process. Many failures are caused by poorly understood scope or requirements, and by poor progressive elaboration when using an iterative approach.
- Invest in good project managers. Work hard to hire well, train well, and coach well. Make sure that project managers are involved in continuous improvement.
- Ensure strong executive sponsorship. Make sure the PMO has executive sponsors who believe in the value of good project management, get engaged, and advocate to other executives and teams.
- Constantly deliver high value. Do internal marketing all the time.