Organizations are increasingly looking to PMOs for greater consistency, efficiencies and better management of costs. Nearly 7 out of 10 organizations have a PMO, according to PMI’s 2013 Pulse of the Profession.
When is it time for your business to begin a PMO implementation plan?
If your organization’s projects are over-budget, over-schedule, and unorganized, the time for that plan could be right now.
A Project Management Office or PMO has increased project successes and decreased delays and overspending. A good PMO can ensure every component of your organization’s projects run successfully from selecting the right methodology to attaining the best teams. A PMO can transform the organization—increasing efficiency, speeding project completion and cutting costs.
Effective PMOs commence the process with a vision founded on the organization’s ideals and establish processes and procedures that can be implemented into any project with very high success rates.
Requirements
Perhaps the biggest challenge in constructing a PMO implementation plan is figuring out where to begin. Solely deciding your organization requires a PMO is not sufficient. You may need to review some questions before starting the planning process:
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Why is your organization considering a PMO?
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How will the PMO be structured?
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What should it contain as far as standardized processes and templates?
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How will the PMO be shared by departments?
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Is the level of complexity within the organization’s environment high—i.e., the effort may involve multiple departments (each of which has different stakeholders) within the client organization?
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Are specialized requirements involved? (For example, HIPPA/PIPEDA information security requirements, financial security requirements etc.)
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Will a single methodology be enforced across the different projects or program team, requiring cultural and behavior changes for the individual contributors?
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Will there be a large number of personnel to be supervised, assigned, and tracked across the projects or program?
Analyzing why projects fail or are over budget with missed deadlines is a good place to start to build your organization’s PMO implementation plan.
Organizational input
Once you’ve established the requirements needed for your organization’s PMO, it’s important to obtain organizational-wide input. Establishing anything different or new in the organization means change and while change is inevitable, you may likely encounter resistance. Thus, it is important to obtain project manager and team member input on what they would like to see in the project management office such as training tools, direction and leadership, reporting systems, communication plans, and reviews and performance meetings.
Implementing the PMO Plan
The PMO implementation plan and its size should be established by the organization structure, number of projects completed and planned, team sizes, education of employees and certification levels of project managers.
It is also crucial to identify early areas of concern or risk. Set clear standards on how the PMO will be run and why it is needed. PMO reviews are necessary from time to time to re-evaluate the project management office and learn from mistakes and processes or procedures that didn’t work.
Interested in learning more about Establishing and Launching PMOs?
The objective of program management is to manage risk and facilitate project coordination by providing a framework for project execution. For more information, download our free guide or contact us at [email protected].
The Litcom Approach
Quite often an organization will have the functional and technical resources necessary to establish and operate a PMO, but not the project management resources required to execute delivery of the PMO function. Litcom has the combination of resources, methodology, and assets ready to provide unbiased oversight and project transparency. For more information on how Litcom can help with your PMO needs, please contact us at: [email protected]
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