Even established project management offices have room to mature.

Congratulations! It’s a brand-new project management office (PMO). Its scope is still a touch fuzzy. Its vision is still developing. But that’s why you brought in project management consultants and mandated training to introduce the terms and concepts. The beginnings of a healthy, growing PMO are in place, but it can’t stop there—because PMOs that don’t mature may not be around for long.

The development of a PMO isn’t all that different from the human life cycle, says Bruce Woerner, PMP, an IT consultant at Allstate Insurance Co., Northbrook, Illinois, USA. In infancy, a PMO is not much more than a “corral around the project managers,” he says. 
And a lot of PMOs are stuck there.

“Despite the rise of the PMO concept, it seems that many PMOs stay in the infancy stage, struggling with their identity and the role they need to play in an organization,” explains Laura Aziz, PhD, PMP, project manager for Computer Sciences Corp., Lake Bluff, Illinois, USA.

So how do you know where your PMO is on the growth chart? “In childlike PMOs, there could be identity struggles and a lack of clarity on direction and goals,” Dr. Aziz says. As PMOs mature, they become more consistent in how they manage the work of projects, she explains.

“In the adult PMO, issues are coordinated across portfolios of projects to generate better economies of scale and better competencies such as corporate risk management, vendor management, outsourcing and procurement,” Mr. Woerner says.

Simply establishing a well-defined plan for PMO development may take anywhere from six to 10 months, Dr. Aziz says. When a PMO finally reaches adolescence, a key to maturing properly is ensuring the PMO culture is blended into the rest of the organization. Companies trying to grow their PMOs often make the mistake of not having a definite leader, Dr. Aziz says. And because PMOs aren’t always staffed with the appropriate people from the start, implementers who expect growth need to create multiple career paths for project managers and provide support for professional development.

Rose Ann Laureto, CIO at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago (UIMCC) in Chicago, Illinois, USA, first implemented an IT PMO in the information services department in 2004. At first “who she had to work with is who she had to work with,” explains Audrius Polikaitis, PhD, assistant director of information services planning at UIMCC, who was later brought in to participate in the PMO.

To gain a standardized set of methodology and tools, the center’s program directors attended a three-day training session, says Miriam Isola, DrPH, program manager, UIMCC. “Training gave us the same language to talk in so that we could come in with the same basic understanding of the terms,” Dr. Isola says. “Now, we’re creating a culture with our own vocabulary and own ideas.”

The final driver of PMO maturity lies in measuring key performance factors—budgets, schedules, resources, change requests and lessons learned. For UIMCC, that meant deploying an enterprise project portfolio management tool to gather data on projects. These tools will help a PMO evolve beyond data-gathering activities to actually utilize the data.

During organizational changes, a PMO that lacks maturity will remain in a cycle justifying its existence. “Until children learn to tie their shoes or to brush their teeth on their own, they will have trouble getting going without help from others,” Mr. Woerner explains. Once those operations are mastered, “the child will be able to focus on higher-order activities of growing up,” he says.

And so it goes with the PMO. With the right building blocks in place, a mature PMO stands on its own, costs less to operate, and provides added value to staff and customers.

This article is based on material in the white paper “Growing Up … The IT Project Management Office (PMO)’s Journey from Infancy to Maturity,” presented by Bruce Woerner, PMP, and Laura Aziz, PhD, PMP, at the PMI Global Congress 2006—North America, held in Seattle, Washington, USA.