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Designing a PMO to Succeed and Survive
"It
takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried
and succeeded"
Anne
Morrow Lindbergh
Keywords: PMO, OPM3, GoPM, AS 8015.
Designing a PMO to Succeed and Survive [P064]
A PMO’s roles and responsibilities must
be based on the organisations needs. The PMO may be a
‘PO’ for projects, a COE (Centre of Excellence) for
programs or an EPMO (Enterprise PMO) for portfolios. Regardless of its
form, a successful PMO requires:
- Executive sponsorship
- Management buy-in
- A clear mandate (Authority and autonomy)
The PMO should contribute to the governance of projects. Effective
project governance ensures that an organisation does the right
projects, and does the selected projects right. Governance
and ‘good practice’ are defined in a range of
standards including:
- OPM3, PMI’s Organizational Project Management Maturity Model
- AS 8015-2005 Australian standard for Corporate Governance of ICT
- GoPM, The APM’s ‘Directing Change, a
guide to the governance of project management.
- OGC’s Governance of Programme Management
None of the three standards totally ‘fits the bill’
for IT Project Portfolio Management strategy support, together they
come close:
- OPM3 covers much of the necessary ground
- AS 8015 adds the specific ICT dimension
- GoPM fills in the governance section
There is reference to stakeholders as being important in all three
standards but no practical methodology for managing them. The
Stakeholder
Circle™ fills this gap, it provides a
methodology
for identifying the ‘right’ stakeholders for each
phase or part of the project/program lifecycle, understanding who is
most important identifying their expectations and requirements from the
project and managing their perceptions through effective communications.
To be successful, PMOs need to be more than administrative
‘police’. PMOs can add significant value in the
strategy and relationship areas of the portfolio by focusing and
supporting:
- Strategic alignment of projects and programs
- Benefits realisation
- Providing leadership in implementation of standards (the best aspects
of OPM3; AS8015; GoPM)
- Managing continuous improvement
- Becoming the information Manager, facilitating open and targeted
communications:
- Between the various levels of the PMO (project,
program and portfolio)
- Between the PMO and organisation executives
(summary reports, dashboards, etc)
- Between project and program management
(health checks, performance metrics, Earned Value, etc).
Author: Dr. Lynda Bourne
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