Establishing a PMO? Here are some things to think about first.

by Malcolm Wheatley

It’s obvious why organizations choose to establish project management offices (PMOs): They boost performance by monitoring the project portfolio and serving as a repository of best practices.

Less clear, however, is exactly how to establish a PMO—even for seasoned Project Management Professional (PMP^®) credential holders.

“There are too many variables,” says BG Jayaram, PMP, associate vice president of the project management center of excellence, Infosys Technologies, Bangalore, India. “The size of the projects involved, the type of projects undertaken by the organization, complexity, the project governance objectives and many other enterprise environment factors—a ‘one-size-fits-all’ formula won’t always work.”

When establishing or restructuring a PMO, keep in mind three things: customers, corporate culture and communication.

Consider your customers.

Paul Lamphear, PMP, IT systems manager at the Kalamazoo, Michigan, USA, plant of pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, recommends an unwavering focus on both deliverables and customers when establishing a PMO. A former director for IT within the plant’s PMO, he says that with such focus, flexibility is key.

Customers are integrally involved in the decisions made by the PMO, and clear channels of communication to them are vital.

“There are certain deliverables that universally apply: a review board, request procedures, agreed project metrics and so on,” he says. “But in the way in which the PMO is structured and organized to achieve those deliverables, there needs to be flexibility.”

Don’t ignore corporate culture.

An organization’s culture should be a top priority when determining whether a PMO follows a centralized model—a more controlled environment where project managers report directly to the head of the PMO—or a decentralized model—where project managers continue to report within their departmental units.

While the centralized PMO model may be more efficient for managing resources, it isn’t appropriate for every scenario, says Jennifer Higgins, PMP, a consultant with Cornelius & Associates, a project management and organizational development consulting firm based in Columbia, South Carolina, USA. “An organization’s culture doesn’t always accept very strictly defined rules and procedures [of a centralized model],” she says. “A decentralized PMO structure, with more of an emphasis on reporting project metrics than mandating particular methodologies, may be more culturally attuned to the organization—and the move to centralization can always follow later.”

Be clear and straightforward.

Clarity is also a virtue when establishing a PMO, says Jack Duggal, PMP, a managing principal with organizational project management specialist Projectize Group LLC, Avon, Connecticut, USA. “Early in the planning process, clarify and agree to the purpose of the PMO—what its mission is, in other words. Many PMO implementations fail because the purpose is not well-stated and the focus is fuzzy, leading to frustration and increasing the potential for unmet needs,” he says.

Communication may be one of the most important elements in establishing a PMO, says Theofanis C. Giotis, PMP, CEO of training and consulting firm ITEC, Athens, Greece. He adds, “As project managers, we do mainly three things: communicate, communicate and communicate. So communication about how the PMO will run is extremely crucial for any organization. If we fail to make clear to the entire company what the role of PMO is, we endanger the whole project delivery process.”