Strategic planning for a project office

Companies are now realizing that their knowledge of project management is intellectual property and must be treated as such. To capture, record, distribute, and update this knowledge, many companies are establishing project offices (POs) and assigning it such responsibilities as portfolio management, strategic planning, and benchmarking. This article examines how to strategically plan such a PO. In doing so, it identifies three activities for strategically planning POs and the three most common types of POs; it reviews the history of POs from 1950 to 2003, pointing out the benefits of implementing POs and the activities common to POs. It then details the relationship between project management information systems (PMIS)--risk management, earned value, performance failure, lessons learned--and PO responsibilities. It explains PO function in relation to information dissemination, mentoring, standards and templates development, and benchmarking.