Project Management Office Nitin Shende, PMP®, IPMA-D

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"Get Acquainted with Project Management Office (PMO)".

“Understand correctly– Plan cautiously & Prepare for long term Pay back period
and RoI ” Before you go for Implementing PMO
Organizations are expanding worldwide and mergers - acquisitions have become buzzword, to be
precise the ‘mantra’ of growth. It has created a ‘need’ and ‘urgency’ for creating project
management culture and methodology wide and across.
Enterprises are looking towards the PMO as a participative facilitator of organizational
effectiveness. Strategic initiatives are managed through various schemes and it is observed that
majority of them revolve around the nucleus called Project Management Office (PMO).
Let’s take a quick look at “Which ‘needs’ are exactly directing everybody towards PMO?”

Sources of Need:

1. Enterprises involving broader interactions of processes and the emerging technologies

2. Increased inter dependencies and minutiae within projects
3. Fortitude for innovation
4. The speed of innovative changes
5. The pace of evolution of technologies
6. Better and faster communication modes within key stakeholders
7. Increase in shorter version of projects
8. Increased volumes of projects
9. Complexity of projects
10. Optimum utilization of resources

Events of Need:

1. Maintaining Cost baselines of the projects

2. Maintaining schedule baselines of the projects
3. Achieving expected margins of the projects
4. Availability of Knowledge assets across the organization
5. Continuous process improvement across the organization
6. Mentoring platform to enhance their efficiencies of resources
7. Up-to-date Tools to be used in projects
8. Health check of projects across the organization
9. Availability of analyzed historical data base
10. Co ordination of inter dependencies within projects

The list of both “Sources” and “Events” can easily be longer than this, constantly orbiting at
different distances around the nucleus of PMO!

Caution: Before going in for such an ‘Unit’ within your organization switch ON an ‘amber light’,
think for a while, look at your right & left and be sure of what you are looking at. Define your
objectives clearly prior to stepping forward to set up a PMO.
Fundamental brainstorming must be conducted for “Where do you stand today? What do you
require? “Project / Program/ Portfolio” Management Office”. Each one of them has different
Objectives and hence its scope and role and responsibilities to be performed.

Project Management Office:

This is a foundation level of project management maturity level. When organizations do not have
existing standard project management methodologies or the processes are more of
‘evolved’ rather than ‘standardized’.

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The primary focus will be on gaining control of the essentials of project management. The Project
Management Office can provide project management knowledge, skills and process area skills
needed for effective completion of the project.

Program Management Office:

A second stage of organizational maturity, in project-oriented management acknowledges that,
providing management to related projects achieves more than managing projects individually.
Treating projects with similar key attributes as program, offers the ability to leverage control and
monitoring elements that the project management approach applies to single projects, but
benefits may be disproportionate. In Program management, shared resource management and
its monitoring controlling becomes more powerful levers to achieve enhanced performances.

Portfolio Management Office:

Portfolio management is usually driven top-down in the enterprise. The objective that justifies the
effort and focus at the top management levels is naturally the one that becomes basic strategic
input for the enterprise business and its direction.
Although portfolio Management syncs with Project and Program initiatives, the skills and style of
the Portfolio Management Office requires to have a specific Business oriented zest and must be
pursued at the very top level management.

Scope of this article is limited to “Project Management Office”.

The goals of the Project Management Office (PMO) should be to bestow business value,
deliver a quality solution, and congregate customer needs.

Step 1:
Assess organizational requirements:
Review existing organizational business processes and project management practices, which will
facilitate in identifying and prioritizing opportunities for improvement. It is essential to identify
strengths and weaknesses of present project management methodology along with
understanding organizational culture and the project management maturity level, which becomes
critical in designing an effective implementation strategy. There are a range of techniques to
collect and ink down the information. These techniques includes but not limited to “Brainstorming,
Interviewing, Meetings at different levels of management, Reviews of any kind of information
about past projects, Collecting ‘pain areas’ and ‘gray areas’ inputs from resources actively
involved on project, Gathering valuable inputs from support departments etc”.

PMO Frame:

PMO
Increased Significant
More
Higher employee competitive
effective
customer satisfaction. advantage.
use of
satisfaction
resources.

The consistent approach brought by a PMO structure enhances a business' ability to manage
global projects and to develop qualified project managers whenever they are needed. PMO also
endow with the infrastructure to the Project managers in the following categories:

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1. Tools and Technique to support performing project management effectively

2. Tools and Technique to support solution delivery
3. Systems that support project work on both the fronts, Technical & Business
4. Resources enhancement programs to boost their knowledge and skills
5. Entrenched project management techniques and practices on business processes
background
6. Implementing Motivational schemes

In order to have predictable project deliveries PMO must deal with some of the key processes
throughout the life cycle of projects:

1. Requirement analysis processes (stakeholder, technical & application)

2. Project planning processes
3. Project executing processes
4. Project Monitoring & Controlling processes
5. Metrics: collection and analysis
6. Quality management
7. Vendor management
8. Configuration management
9. Resource enhancement
10. Overall Process improvement

The Project Management Office should provide a framework for the establishment, maintenance,
and training of process and methods for project delivery. The idea is to assist Project Managers
throughout the life cycle of the project while delivering fundamental deliverables and generating
assets for the organization.

Step 2:

Compass:

The Project Management Office must stay focused on the development of organizational skill in
executing project management on a project-by-project basis. The key responsibilities and value
generation during the life of enterprise wide projects is to define appropriate development
workflows and facilitation to undergo procedures, process descriptions and templates, and by
delivering training and creating quality consciousness. In short, the cumulative effort should
result in building up a strong capabilities of managing projects in the organization.

A dominant PMO should provide leadership in helping to secure new business and support on-
going business. It also helps ensure that the business delivers a high quality service at a
competitive price to its customers. An exultant PMO provides the developmental activities that
project managers need to effectively manage projects as well as to progress in their careers.

Step 3:

Core areas of focus:

Project Management Processes and Methodology

PMO characterizes the requirement of rigorous processes to manage multiple projects and their
dependencies. These include project management processes, an integrated methodology,
policies, standards, and tools. The PMO is also responsible for defining and maintaining policies,
procedures and other business practices relating to project management throughout the customer

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engagement.
PMO responsibilities all the way through customer engagement:

a) The pre initiation stage of the project, i.e. “a methodical approach towards
creating customer engagement within organizational strengths and strategies”.

b) The success of “Bid – Win - Delivery” kind of activities largely depends on cross-
functional efforts, which necessitates a disciplined approach towards managing
Pre, During and Post project assignments.

The customer engagement roadmap goes through following stages:

1. Creating Opportunity :Identification of projects for evaluation

2. Evaluating Opportunity: Evaluation against ‘Opportunities and Threats’ against

organizational strengths and weaknesses

3. Developing proposals: Developing and submitting the proposal focusing the solution for
the customer and creating organizational assets

4. Negotiation: Obtaining the mutually agreeable contract

5. Delivery and Support: Solution implementation and post project support

Project Management Development

A very simple but important phrase: Everything is perfect and everything can be
improved!.
The same is true of project management. It is a focal point skill and competency that must be
continually developed. In order to develop the best project managers possible, a PMO must
provide a program that addresses a broad spectrum of development activities that:

a) Encourage professional growth and development.

b) Cultivate a sense of community and teamwork.

c) Build a powerful knowledge culture where knowledge is shared on a global

basis.

Trainings:
A proud PMO must provide the training that project managers need to learn the latest techniques
in all aspects of project management. Even the most experienced project managers must
continue to upgrade and update their knowledge and skills. The trainings should be evaluated
correctly against the value addition rather than only on commercials! It should be taken into
account as priority requirement and schedules and budgets must be developed considering this
as ‘Critical Activity’.

Motivation:
To encourage high performance concerned with project management, a driving force in terms of
appreciation and incentive programs should be recommended. A project management career
path with expectations for each level should offer a growth path through all the levels. Knowledge
sharing should be encouraged, consisting of lessons learned, project experience, conference
papers and presentations, and internal PM forums. In order to share knowledge and also get
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socialized with PM community, project managers should be encouraged to participate in

seminars, conferences and gatherings organized by recognized institutes and other project
management professional associations.

Conclusion:

PMO strengthens organizational project management in multiple ways:

Project support: Provide project management guidance to project managers in business units.
Project management process/methodology: Develop and implement a consistent and
standardized process.
Training: Conduct training programs or collect requirements and arrange proper trainings from
an outside agency.
Home for project managers: Maintain a centralized office from which project managers are
loaned out to work on projects.
Internal consulting and mentoring: Advise employees about best practices.
Project management software tools: Select and maintain project management tools for use by
employees.
Portfolio support: Establish a staff of program managers who can manage multiple projects that
are related, such as infrastructure, technologies, software applications, performance
enhancements, support and so on, and allocate resources accordingly.

Key Advice:

 Staff the PMO you choose with people that have the skills and experience to assume the
roles that will be required.

 Be sure to have the corporate sponsorship and support appropriate for the scope of
activities implied by the PMO being implemented.

 Define, Implement and analyze the results to reach to right destination.

 Do not expect turnkey results immediately.

 Be patient to catch the fruits of PMO, it take its own time to get matured

 Maintain all these trivia in place, and the PMO should be satisfying the needs of
organization.

Declaration:
This is to inform you that the contents of this document “Project Management Office
(PMO)” is an outcome of experience gained while working with various organizations
across the globe and the knowledge acquired from numerous books/documents/school of
thoughts, that I have come across in the long journey .

Thanks By : Nitin Shende, PMP®, IPMA-D, DBM (ICS, UK)

Vice President,3PM Vinsys,India

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