Choosing the Right PMO Vision: 1. Key Considerations- Why a PMO?
1. Key considerations- why a PMO in the first place, reporting structure, underlying theme.
Why are you considering a PMO? Usually something painful drives the creation, or reevaluation, of a PMO. Projects may be failing; failure can be described as being way over budget, not completing, and/or not achieving desired results. There may simply be too many projects taken on by the company- this is usually due to lack of attention to resources required and the multiple use of resources. Project management simply may have gotten out of control leading to a crisis. Many times the crisis is lack of money. This leads to a focus on cutting costs related to projects which usually leads to a project monitoring effort that everyone hates. If the PMO is not viewed as an asset by people running projects then it will probably be short lived. Knowing why we are where we are is crucial. PMOs should be valuable, viable, long term entities. They should control projects in a way that serves accomplishment of strategies and business objectives. So, we don’t want a PMO to be doing things that guarantee it’s demise. Think this through with me- why are you considering a PMO? or, if you aren’t, why not? Are the PMO functions that you are considering going to help the business execute strategies? Put another way, if the PMO is going to monitor on-time completion of individual tasks on projects, does this help the company execute strategies?
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POSTED IN: Choosing the Right PMO Vision, PMOs and Portfolio Management
5 opinions for Choosing the Right PMO Vision: 1. Key Considerations- Why a PMO?
PM Hut
Mar 20, 2008 at 1:05 am
I like this series on PMO. Question, is this part of a book you wrote or you’re planning to write?
Bob Turek
Mar 20, 2008 at 8:33 pm
PM Hut- thanks for commenting. I used to work for a consulting company that implemented project management systems. Most of my thinking comes from that experience and a great book by Gerry Kendall about Project Portfolio Managment and PMOs. Why are you interested in PMOs? If you have some experience in project management, I’m sure you could add some great information to this blog.
PM Hut
Mar 20, 2008 at 9:55 pm
Hi Bob,
Well this series is great.
I love the PMO topic and there’s a very big section on PM Hut about PMO. I’m actually thinking about republishing some of your material on PM Hut. Let’s talk (by email) in case you’re interested.
Thanks,
Bob Turek
Mar 23, 2008 at 9:23 am
PM Hut- as long as you attribute the pieces properly I have no problem with you republishing. I’ve still got to make some time to go to your site this week. Thanks. Let’s get this great information out there where people can use it.
Bob Turek
Mar 23, 2008 at 9:25 am
PM Hut- I assume that you saw the “Choosing the Right PMO Vision Series” in my “Pages”- it is a congloomeration of all of the posts I’ve done on this topic in the order I did them.
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