How project management office leaders facilitate cross-project learning and continuous improvement

A project management office (PMO) can serve many organizational purposes: formalizing a project management methodology, training project managers, and generating enterprise and executive support for projects. This article examines how PMOs can also facilitate cross-project learning and continuous improvement. In doing so, it overviews the literature on--and the challenges involved in--generating organizational learning in project environments and via PMOs; it lists the author's three research questions and discusses this study's theoretical background and seven-component conceptual framework--both involving cross-project learning--informing and structuring the author's interviews with 20 PMO leaders, conversations focusing on how PMOs contribute to organizational learning, from one project to the next. It describes the research methodology and the four key findings that the author identified from the interviews.