Project Management Office Nitin Shende, PMP®, IPMA-D

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Project Management Office “PMO”

Organizations are expanding worldwide and mergers - acquisitions have become

buzzword, to be precise the ‘mantra’ of growth. It has created a ‘need’ and
‘urgency’ for creating project management culture and methodology wide and
across.
Enterprises are looking towards the PMO as a participative facilitator of
organizational effectiveness. Strategic initiatives are managed through various
schemes and it is observed that majority of them revolve around the nucleus
called Project Management Office (PMO).
Let’s take a quick look at “Which ‘needs’ are exactly directing everybody
towards PMO?”

Sources of Need:

1. Enterprises involving broader interactions of processes and the emerging

technologies
2. Increased inter dependencies and intricacies within projects
3. Persistence for innovation
4. The speed of innovative changes
5. The pace of evolution of technologies
6. Better and faster communication modes within key stakeholders
7. Increase in shorter version of projects
8. Increased volumes of projects
9. Complexity of projects
10. Optimum utilization of resources

Events of Need:

1. Maintaining Cost baselines of the projects

2. Maintaining schedule baselines of the projects
3. Achieving expected margins of the projects
4. Availability of Knowledge assets across the organization
5. Continuous process improvement across the organization
6. Mentoring platform to enhance their efficiencies of resources
7. Up-to-date Tools to be used in projects
8. Health check of projects across the organization
9. Availability of analyzed historical data base
10. Co ordination of inter dependencies within projects

The list of both “Sources” and “Events” can easily be longer than this, constantly
orbiting at different distances around the nucleus of PMO!

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Caution: Before going in for such an ‘Unit’ within your organization switch ON an
‘amber light’, think for a while, look at your right & left and be sure of what you
are looking at. Define your objectives clearly prior to stepping forward to set up a
PMO.
Fundamental brainstorming must be conducted for “Where do you stand today?
What do you require? “Project / Program/ Portfolio” Management Office”. Each
one of them has different Objectives and hence its scope and role and
responsibilities to be performed.

Project Management Office:

This is a foundation level of project management maturity level. When
organizations do not have existing standard project management
methodologies or the processes are more of ‘evolved’ rather than
‘standardized’.
The primary focus will be on gaining control of the essentials of project
management. The Project Management Office can provide project management
knowledge, skills and process area skills needed for effective completion of the
project.

Program Management Office:

A second stage of organizational maturity, in project-oriented management
acknowledges that, providing management to related projects achieves more
than managing projects individually.
Treating projects with similar key attributes as program, offers the ability to
leverage control and monitoring elements that the project management approach
applies to single projects, but benefits may be disproportionate. In Program
management, shared resource management and its monitoring controlling
becomes more powerful levers to achieve enhanced performances.

Portfolio Management Office:

Portfolio management is usually driven top-down in the enterprise. The objective
that justifies the effort and focus at the top management levels is naturally the
one that becomes basic strategic input for the enterprise business and its
direction.
Although portfolio Management syncs with Project and Program initiatives, the
skills and style of the Portfolio Management Office requires to have a specific
Business oriented zest and must be pursued at the very top level management.

Scope of this article is limited to “Project Management Office”.

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The goals of the Project Management Office (PMO) should be to bestow

business value, deliver a quality solution, and congregate customer needs.

Step 1:

Assess organizational requirements:

Review existing organizational business processes and project management
practices, which will facilitate in identifying and prioritizing opportunities for
improvement. It is essential to identify strengths and weaknesses of present
project management methodology along with understanding organizational
culture and the project management maturity level, which becomes critical in
designing an effective implementation strategy. There are a range of techniques
to collect and ink down the information. These techniques includes but not limited
to “Brainstorming, Interviewing, Meetings at different levels of management,
Reviews of any kind of information about past projects, Collecting ‘pain areas’
and ‘gray areas’ inputs from resources actively involved on project, Gathering
valuable inputs from support departments etc”.

PMO Frame:

PMO

Increased Significant
More
Higher employee competitive
effective
customer satisfaction. advantage.
use of
satisfaction
resources.

The consistent approach brought by a PMO structure enhances a business'

ability to manage global projects and to develop qualified project managers
whenever they are needed. PMO also endow with the infrastructure to the
Project managers in the following categories:

1. Tools and Technique to support performing project management

effectively
2. Tools and Technique to support solution delivery

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3. Systems that support project work on both the fronts, Technical &
Business
4. Resources enhancement programs to boost their knowledge and skills
5. Entrenched project management techniques and practices on business
processes background
6. Implementing Motivational schemes

In order to have predictable project deliveries PMO must deal with some of
the key processes throughout the life cycle of projects:

1. Requirement analysis processes (stakeholder, technical & application)

2. Project planning processes
3. Project executing processes
4. Project Monitoring & Controlling processes
5. Metrics: collection and analysis
6. Quality management
7. Vendor management
8. Configuration management
9. Resource enhancement
10. Overall Process improvement

The Project Management Office should provide a framework for the

establishment, maintenance, and training of process and methods for project
delivery. The idea is to assist Project Managers throughout the life cycle of the
project while delivering fundamental deliverables and generating assets for the
organization.

Step 2:

Compass:

The Project Management Office must stay focused on the development of

organizational skill in executing project management on a project-by-project
basis. The key responsibilities and value generation during the life of enterprise
wide projects is to define appropriate development workflows and facilitation to
undergo procedures, process descriptions and templates, and by delivering
training and creating quality consciousness. In short, the cumulative effort
should result in building up a strong capabilities of managing projects in the
organization.

A dominant PMO should provide leadership in helping to secure new business

and support on-going business. It also helps ensure that the business delivers a
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high quality service at a competitive price to its customers. An exultant PMO

provides the developmental activities that project managers need to effectively
manage projects as well as to progress in their careers.

Step 3:

Core areas of focus:

Project Management Processes and Methodology

PMO characterizes the requirement of rigorous processes to manage multiple
projects and their dependencies. These include project management processes,
an integrated methodology, policies, standards, and tools. The PMO is also
responsible for defining and maintaining policies, procedures and other business
practices relating to project management throughout the customer engagement.

PMO responsibilities all the way through customer engagement:

a) The pre initiation stage of the project, i.e. “a methodical approach

towards creating customer engagement within organizational
strengths and strategies”.

b) The success of “Bid – Win - Delivery” kind of activities largely

depends on cross-functional efforts, which necessitates a
disciplined approach towards managing Pre, During and Post
project assignments.

The customer engagement roadmap goes through following stages:

1. Creating Opportunity :Identification of projects for evaluation

2. Evaluating Opportunity: Evaluation against ‘Opportunities and Threats’

against organizational strengths and weaknesses

3. Developing proposals: Developing and submitting the proposal focusing

the solution for the customer and creating organizational assets

4. Negotiation: Obtaining the mutually agreeable contract

5. Delivery and Support: Solution implementation and post project support

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Project Management Development

A very simple but important phrase: Everything is perfect and everything

can be improved!.
The same is true of project management. It is a focal point skill and competency
that must be continually developed. In order to develop the best project
managers possible, a PMO must provide a program that addresses a broad
spectrum of development activities that:

a) Encourage professional growth and development.

b) Cultivate a sense of community and teamwork.

c) Build a powerful knowledge culture where knowledge is shared

on a global basis.

Trainings:
A proud PMO must provide the training that project managers need to learn the
latest techniques in all aspects of project management. Even the most
experienced project managers must continue to upgrade and update their
knowledge and skills. The trainings should be evaluated correctly against the
value addition rather than only on commercials! It should be taken into account
as priority requirement and schedules and budgets must be developed
considering this as ‘Critical Activity’.

Motivation:
To encourage high performance concerned with project management, a driving
force in terms of appreciation and incentive programs should be recommended.
A project management career path with expectations for each level should offer a
growth path through all the levels. Knowledge sharing should be encouraged,
consisting of lessons learned, project experience, conference papers and
presentations, and internal PM forums. In order to share knowledge and also get
socialized with PM community, project managers should be encouraged to
participate in seminars, conferences and gatherings organized by recognized
institutes and other project management professional associations.

Conclusion:

PMO strengthens organizational project management in multiple ways:

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Project support: Provide project management guidance to project managers in

business units.
Project management process/methodology: Develop and implement a
consistent and standardized process.
Training: Conduct training programs or collect requirements and arrange proper
trainings from an outside agency.
Home for project managers: Maintain a centralized office from which project
managers are loaned out to work on projects.
Internal consulting and mentoring: Advise employees about best practices.
Project management software tools: Select and maintain project management
tools for use by employees.
Portfolio support: Establish a staff of program managers who can manage
multiple projects that are related, such as infrastructure, technologies, software
applications, performance enhancements, support and so on, and allocate
resources accordingly.

Key Advice:

 Staff the PMO you choose with people that have the skills and experience
to assume the roles that will be required.

 Be sure to have the corporate sponsorship and support appropriate for the
scope of activities implied by the PMO being implemented.

 Define, Implement and analyze the results to reach to right destination.

 Do not expect turn key results immediately.

 Be patient to catch the fruits of PMO, it take its own time to get matured

 With these alignments in place, the PMO can deliver on its promise to the
enterprise.

Declaration:
This is to inform you that the contents of this document “Project
Management Office (PMO)” are authored by me, which is an outcome of
experience gained while working with various organizations across the
globe and the knowledge acquired from numerous
books/documents/school of thoughts, that I have come across in the long
journey .

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Thanks

Author: Nitin Shende, PMP®, IPMA-D, DBM (ICS, UK)

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