Objectives of a PMO

In the last blog post, 6. How to set up a PMO, I talked about the steps to take to quickly set up a practical PMO.

In this post I want to expand on the initial step, Objectives of the PMO. This is vitally as it will help you and other individuals understand the objective of the PMO. This is crucial to stop all the people that will question the value and need of the PMO.

Primary Purpose

In my mind the aim of any PMO is extremely simple, it is to provide a framework which will support all stakeholders and project teams to improve the probability of successful delivery . An organisation embarks on a project to reach an end result. This involves the investment of precious resources (people, money, time). If the PMO doesn’t improve the chance of successfully project implementation it’s not doing it’s job and isn’t required.

How this is achieved

This may change depending on what type of PMO is required. But key guidelines will be:

• Standards: Look to implant common tools and processes based on organisation standards where they exist.
• Consistency: Look to ensure that each project/workstream is completing reports, documents, plans to the same level using common standards (this is a must for comparing relative status of projects).
• Transparency: The PMO must provide transparency of progress and standing of all projects to all stakeholders. This may make allowance for warnings of issues allowing intervention to keep projects on track.
• Pragmatic: only do something if it makes sense and adds value. Challenge where organisation standards exist that do not appear sensible. Failure to do that will put you in the position of being viewed as an overhead that does not add value.
• Fit for Purpose: Avoid over engineering and replication of tools and processes. Project Managers are busy delivering. Don't make their job harder by making duplicate requests.
• Be Smart: Ensure you coordinate update requests and think about the info you need. Do not be regarded as a PMO where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing with multiple and repeated requests.
• Independence: Remember, while your target is to build a good working relationship with the projects so you can help them, you need to be careful to not get too close as this will cloud your judgement when challenging progress, status, etc.

This isn't an complete or possibly a purist list of PMO objectives and there'll be some specific objectives depending on organisation requirements. Nonetheless if you are aiming to build a practical PMO that is valued by your stakeholders, applying the above objectives and beliefs will provide enourmous benefits.

Simon Wilkinson owns of Practical PMO where he writes a frequent blog providing practical insights on the way to set up a PMO.