How Award-Winning PMOs Drive Business Transformation

From clean energy to digital banking, today’s top PMOs aren’t just executing projects—they’re driving enterprise-wide transformation. Learn how six award-winning teams turned disruption into opportunity and what their stories reveal about the future of PMO leadership.

Written by Deborah Walker • 9 May 2025

Project Management Offices (PMOs) have evolved far beyond their traditional role of governance and oversight. Today, the most effective PMOs act as strategic drivers of business transformation, helping organizations adapt to a rapidly changing world marked by digital disruption, sustainability imperatives, and the rising demand for agility.

As Americo Pinto, Managing Director of PMI’s PMO Global Alliance, explains in the 2024 PMO Global Awards report, today’s PMOs are “strategic enablers of transformation, catalysts for innovation and drivers of sustainable business value.” They’re helping organizations navigate a range of complex challenges—from AI adoption to ESG mandates to post-pandemic shifts in how and where work gets done.

This year’s winners didn’t just hit milestones—they redefined what a high-impact PMO looks like. They turned strategy into outcomes, frameworks into results, and disruption into opportunity. From SPC Brasil’s enterprise-wide transformation to Moffitt Cancer Center’s maturity model breakthrough, each winning PMO offers hard-earned lessons about what it takes to create value today—and tomorrow.

Five traits of high-performing PMOs

Several key themes emerged across the 2024 award recipients, and they offer a roadmap for any PMO seeking to elevate its strategic influence and measurable impact.

Strategic evolution drives real business outcomes: Today’s leading PMOs have moved beyond project execution to become trusted strategic partners. They’re shaping organizational direction and priorities through portfolio management, benefits realization, and alignment with long-term business strategy.
Digital transformation is championed by PMOs: This year’s top PMOs are embracing AI, automation, and advanced analytics to enhance decision-making, improve efficiency, and help their organizations navigate digital change with confidence.
Agility is hybrid and fit-for-purpose: Top PMOs are rejecting either/or thinking in favor of flexible frameworks that support both predictive and agile methods. They empower teams to use the right tool for the job.
People are the drivers of innovation and resilience: Winning PMOs foster a culture of continuous learning, diversity, and cross-functional collaboration. They invest in talent and create space for innovation to thrive.
Sustainability becomes part of the PMO’s mission: Many of this year’s winners are driving ESG initiatives—from clean energy to water stewardship to community-focused programs—making sustainability a core part of their project portfolios.

Excellence in action: Lessons from award-winning PMOs

For a more detailed look at each of these PMOs—including metrics, photographs, and transformation stories—download the full 2024 PMO Global Awards e-book.

Flexing to the future: SPC Brasil

What does it take to drive impact across Latin America’s largest credit database? For SPC Brasil’s PMO, it’s about embracing flexibility, collaboration and a laser-focus on results.

Between 2022 and 2023, the PMO helped reduce time to market and delays on projects. This PMO’s secret? Frameworks that prioritize stakeholder engagement, communication and project prioritization.

For example, by running annual surveys with hundreds of stakeholders, the PMO can better adapt to evolving expectations—and deliver expected value. The PMO also collaborates with executive stakeholders to select the most high-impact projects for the company’s portfolio.

A pipeline for progress: Waha Oil Co.

Despite being one of Libya’s largest power producers, Waha Oil Co. was suffering from outdated project management practices. So, in 2019, Waha and its parent company launched a centralized PMO to lay the foundation for the years ahead.

PMO leaders developed a five-year improvement plan with priorities such as creating strong structures and workflows and driving company-wide awareness in key areas of project management. The result? Solidifying alignment across Waha’s megaprojects, which contribute to much of the Libya’s daily crude oil output and laying the groundwork for a better economic future.

The power of sustainability: PT PLN (Persero)

Indonesia’s state-owned electricity provider, PT PLN (Persero), is helping the country achieve a cleaner, more sustainable energy future. And its PMO has been a driving force toward that goal.

PLN’s PMO has undergone more than one evolution along the way. Its latest? Introducing an Energy Transition and Sustainability Division and turning its PMO into an enterprise PMO (EPMO) with its own strategic delivery unit to oversee progress—and remove bottlenecks.

Today, the EPMO has oversight of thousands of clean energy projects worth US$26.4 billion. The impact so far? A massive reduction in PLN’s planned greenhouse gas emissions.

Invested in change: ING Spain and Portugal

When ING expanded into Spain and Portugal, the financial services giant had a bold vision: transform banking for a new digital-savvy generation. And its powerhouse PMO has been a driving force in that transformation.

From 2021 to 2023, ING Spain & Portugal’s PMO boosted organizational productivity by rewriting the rules of agility and innovation. That business reboot included unveiling a new, streamlined governance structure that empowers project managers to adapt quickly during fast-paced digital projects.

A vision for success: Public Investment Fund

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 plan is full of gigaprojects and other ambitious efforts—from futuristic urban developments to renewable energy and clean transportation initiatives. And the PMO at the country’s project financing authority, Public Investment Fund (PIF), is helping to turn that vision into reality.

To deliver successful initiatives, PMO leaders take a systematic approach. Team members use a classification framework to assess project complexity and senior leadership direction. The PMO also emphasizes a tailored governance approach for each project, helping ensure each initiative aligns with the PIF’s bold transformation targets.

Healing Powers: Moffitt Cancer Center

When your mission is saving lives, every project matters. That’s why the enterprise PMO at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, USA has spent the last five years in transformation mode—improving its ability to deliver complex initiatives through the consistent use of frameworks and data-driven insights.

Along the way, PMO leaders placed a relentless focus on communication, stakeholder relationships and strategic alignment. Such efforts have helped the EPMO increase its Gartner maturity score and evolve into an enterprise-wide strategic force—managing a nearly US$600 million portfolio for the cancer center and delivering impact for Moffitt’s patients across more than 130 countries.

How to lead like an award-winning PMO

The takeaway? High-performing PMOs aren’t just better at project management—they’re better at driving change. They lead with strategy, deliver with discipline, and adapt with confidence. If you're building or evolving a PMO, this year’s winners offer a playbook worth studying.