Project Management 411

Choosing the Right PMO Vision: 3. PMO Models- Enterprise

by Bob Turek on November 12th, 2007

A major shift occurs in companies pursuing the enterprise model because it requires the PMO to consider ALL projects across ALL disciplines. The reason is that companies realize that resources and dollars are limited and projects compete for them. A realization that waste can be eliminated, as it relates to time, resources and money, begins to take hold. Bottlenecks and constraints are recognized a major causes of disruption and dictate how many projects can actually be accomplished by the organization. This is not a CIO’s model- it goes beyond IT projects to include marketing, product development, non-IT infrastructure, and more. Interestingly this model begins to have higher value; but that value is severely limited by the lack of a clear authoritative link to the C-level of the organization. This model still has not embraced the role of supporting the execution of strategies- in fact it cannot because it tends to flail around without a clear governance structure. Responsibility without authority comes to mind. This model can attain value in the 5-10% range of improvement in the three areas of project budget, throughput and projects completed, IF it has become a centralized continuous improvement vehicle. This means that project managers share problems and solutions that they experience on the various types of projects they encounter. This sharing takes time to do however and most enterprise PMOs suffer from lack of time. The investment is far higher once the enterprise wide model is considered- this alone labels it a candidate for budget reduction. So, clearly higher value is still having trouble overcoming the risk of failure and disbandment. Who has experience making the leap to an enterprise-wide PMO? Did anyone experience an attempt to shrink the PMO back to a coaching/mentoring model? Did anyone gain higher value in any of the three value areas without strong central governance?

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POSTED IN: Choosing the Right PMO Vision, PMOs and Portfolio Management