A Project Management Office (PMO) is established in an organization to boost strategic value and effectively monitor key initiatives and operations. On an enterprise level, a PMO provides an organization a specified oversight to help ensure that Projects, Programs, and Portfolios are delivered on schedule, on budget with the desired return to investment, and are in alignment with corporate strategy/objectives.
1) PMO is accountable for developing and adopting the standard PPM (Project and Program/Portfolio Management) administration, methodologies, processes, procedures, governance frameworks, key indicators, metrics, and various templates to be utilized by the project teams, stakeholders, and resource groups. PMO selects the relevant practices that are prevalent and used throughout the industry. PMO plays a key facilitating role in an organization’s success, enabling long-run tangible benefits as well as evolves/adapts to strategical and cultural changes.
2 ) PMO selects the relevant practices that are prevalent and used throughout the industry.
3 ) PMO plays a key facilitating role in an organization’s success, enabling long-run tangible benefits as well as evolves/adapts to strategical and cultural changes.
Additionally, PMO maintains the central repository of project data, reporting, processes, artifacts, and relevant historical information. This also includes maintenance of the Risk/Issue logs, mitigation steps, and lessons learned database. PMO also ensures that appropriate tools are deployed to share the PPM data across stakeholder groups, executive management, and project teams.
Typical life-cycle process for Projects and Programs
Though in theoretical terms, a typical waterfall project implementation is a 5 phased (Initiation to Closure) approach, it can further be sub-categorized as follows:
1) Initiation:
– an idea/request/objective/strategy translates into a project intake request
2) Analysis:
– conduct feasibility study, business case, Charter, and document business requirements
3) Approval:
– executive sponsorship and cost/schedule/resource approvals
4) Prioritization:
– how the project measures with strategic alignment, other projects, and available budget/resources/timelines
5) Assign:
– Work allocated to teams responsible for delivery
6) Deploy/monitor:
– project delivery, cadence, scorecards, manage risks, issues, and changes
7) Operational handoff:
– for ongoing support and maintenance
8) Close off:
– documentation, lessons learned, and data archival
A PMO with standard methodologies, governance, tools, and templates, if executed appropriately, can surely enhance PPM delivery success for strategic objectives and targets.