A project management office, abbreviated to PMO, is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution.
Contents
Darling & Whitty (2016) identify the definition of the PMO's function has evolved over time:
Often PMOs base project management principles on industry-standard methodologies such as PRINCE2 or guidelines such as PMBOK.
Performance
According to the Standish CHAOS Report (2009), 68% of software projects do not meet time/cost/scope targets. Only 32% of projects were completed on time, within budget and delivered measurable business and stakeholder benefits.
There are many reasons for such failures. As per a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 1,524 organizations, inadequate project estimating and planning constitutes 30% of project failures, lack of executive sponsorship constitutes 16% and poorly defined goals and objectives constitutes 12%. It also found that using established project management approaches increased success as measured by a project's key performance indicators of quality, scope, schedule, budgets and benefits. The survey indicates that operating an established PMO is one of the top three reasons that drives successful project delivery.
Darling & Whitty (2016) found there is complexity of interconnections in PMO intellectual capital and though often the rationale for PMO establishment is to enhance stakeholder satisfaction with projects often the establishment of the PMO leads to significant dissatisfaction by senior management.
Functions
PMOs may take other functions beyond standards and methodology, and participate in Strategic project management either as facilitator or actively as owner of the Portfolio Management process. Tasks may include monitoring and reporting on active projects and portfolios (following up project until completion), and reporting progress to top management for strategic decisions on what projects to continue or cancel.
The degree of control and influence that PMOs have on projects depend on the type of PMO structure within the enterprise; it can be:
There are many opinions and practices some say PMO's must fulfill, The PMBoK 5th edition dedicates a page and a half to such discussion identifying 6 PMO functions. (Hobbs & Aubry 2010) identified 27 distinct functions of PMO's highlighting a number of these were found to not correlate to enhanced project performance. Darling & Whitty (2016) state there is a need for evidence-based management practice, that consultants and practitioners are providing unproven solutions which organisations both public and private are investing enormous quantities of finance to without assured outcome, further the publication of opinions without scientific basis in the field of science, medicine or law would not be tolerated, and it is equally important for justification to be presented in the management field.
Types
A PMO can be one of three types from an organizational exposure perspective:
The Project Management Institute (PMI) Program Management Office Community of Practice (CoP), describes the PMO as a strategic driver for organizational excellence, which seeks to enhance the practices of execution management, organizational governance, and strategic change leadership.
Darling & Whitty (2016) highlight many PMO typologies exist from the early 1800s as a collective for running government strategy in the agricultural sector, to the civil infrastructure projects of the early 20th century to the early 2000s when the PMO became a commodity to be traded and traded upon. It would be impossible to group PMO's into specific types (Darling & Whitty, 2016).