This is an informal overview of \nsetting up a PMO in an organisation. It looks at what a PMO can do, the \nsteps to take, making it work and retaining support. Areas touched on \ninclude benefits, direction, organisational structure, co-operation and \nchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Author: Dave Roney Consultant at i3Works<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n What is it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n So, you\u2019re thinking about whether setting up a PMO (Portfolio, \nProgramme or Project Management Office) is right for you. A PMO is more \nthan a centralised project team, it is a great enabler of benefits. On a\n business level it links your projects to your business strategy, it \nidentifies dependencies and it provides the governance, planning and \nrisk management to deliver to cost, time and quality. At a programme \nlevel it contains the knowledge management and best practice to ensure \nbenefits are realised and benchmarked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Setting it up<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re going to set up a PMO you must do so with the commitment of\n the business behind it with the first job you have being to agree a \nvision and\/or charter. This sets out the need and reason for the PMO to \nexist and explains where it sits in the business. It gives it direction,\n the authority to be able to operate effectively and specifies what it \nwill and will not do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The next step is to consider how your business currently operates and\n how you want it to in the future. Will you need to restructure to staff\n the PMO? Perhaps develop new processes and templates? Or focus on \nworking with the partner business areas most commonly involved with \nprojects (such as procurement, IT and communications) to prevent \ncapacity bottlenecks and agree resourcing and prioritisation strategies?<\/p>\n\n\n\n While this is going on it is vital to identify and work with your \nstakeholders. As with a project (which this essentially is) you need to \nknow what the stakeholders want to get from it and what motivates them. \nIt is highly likely that you will also want to include some of them in \nthe governance team who will provide oversight and control. Again, as \nwith a project, agreeing this control is hugely important as it \nestablishes how progress will be monitored and checked and the \nmechanisms for managing issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Staffing the PMO is next on the list. Whether you have restructured \nor recruited to fill the positions, you will have done so with a firm \nidea of the types of role needed in the team. For these roles to be \ncarried out effectively it is essential to understand what skills the \nteam already have in place and what training needs there are. Once \nidentified, this training can then be produced as a professional \ndevelopment package.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Getting it to work<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You now have the PMO set up and staffed by people with the right \nskills, so how do you make sure it works? Change management is key here \nand must be tackled both emotionally and logically. You need to keep \nengaging with and selling the idea of the PMO to the business and staff,\n identify and implement any change enablers, remove obstacles and make \nsure your ideas and direction are known and understood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Retaining support<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Finally, how will you retain support? To ensure on-going support the \nPMO has to establish credibility and impress. Benchmarking must be \ncarried out on all work to show tangible gains and beware of over \nselling as setbacks at an early stage may make it hard to regain \nmomentum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best and safest way to do this is to produce some small, quick \nwins. Concentrate initially on projects with supportive management and a\n high likelihood of success.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is an informal overview of setting up a PMO in an organisation. It looks at what a PMO can do, the steps to take, making it work and retaining support. Areas touched on include benefits, direction, organisational structure, co-operation and change. Author: Dave Roney Consultant at i3Works<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":189,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82\/revisions\/189"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.i3works.co.uk\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}