1. What is the purpose and mission
of a PMO?
Mission:
Deliver
successful IT projects
Build
Project Management maturity at the organizational level
Keep
Management and Project Community informed
Serve
as the organization’s authority on IT Project Management practices
Purpose:
The
purpose was to have consistent project practices as formal documentation and
plans for PMO did not exist
Responsibilities:
At
present the responsibilities limited to IT projects. Te duties of PMO were divided into 2 categories:
1)
Project –Focused (consulting, mentoring, and training) ** Primary means used to
prove PMO merit;
2)
Enterprise –Oriented (portfolio management, PM standards, methods, and tools)
I see a lot of headaches for the CIO when implementation a
PMO in the enterprise. Regardless of the technical challenges during the
implementation, the core of the problems seems to be that the PMO is lacking
organization support, from the top to the bottom. There is not enough executive
stakeholder support; there is no visibility of the program; there is a conflict
of interests within departments; people are reluctant to change the ways they
have been doing things.
The PMO vision and role is not clearly defined. There is no complete agreement
regarding its purpose, its responsibilities, and its authority. It has slowly
evolved.
Not enough executive stakeholder support. Not all of the senior executives
were equally enthused about the PMO concept. Authority was primarily being
developed bottom-up through the value of the PMO services. Even this was
limited to those functional areas and IT areas actively engaging the PMO. There
was no current plan to enforce usage at the enterprise level.
Corporate culture limitation. Corporate cultural change had been
informal. They never treated PM, PMO, formal processes seriously. Normal
Operation Processes and function units have to change their culture, behaviour,
and even habits if they work with a PMO.
No support from department management. Department managers may see no value
in introducing a PMO in their projects. Also there are political conflicts as
well, with managers worrying about the PMO getting to much authority.
3. What structural and governance mechanisms are critical to
effective PMO implementation?
A
successful structure can range from simple project data reporting to a
centralized structure that takes the lead on every aspect of project
management. A PMO that is organizationally based versus departmentally based is
more likely to get executive support. A de-centralized PMO structure could have
difficulty performing a strong role when using matrix-managed resources. A
centralized structure that does nothing more than report status will add too much
overhead to the institution. The more responsibility assigned to project office,
the higher it should report in the institution. The most robust structure usually
requires reporting directly to the President or CEO of the institution for maximum
effectiveness. For staff allocation, a combination of the two approaches will
require the company to hire an individual for PMO implementation. Along with
that the current managers can be trained for the PMO implementation to make it
effective without hiring new staff as the company has limited resources
available.
4. How much PM is enough PM?
How much PMO support is enough PMO support?
AptekPC seems to have an informal pattern of
communication, which can’t be radically changed within a short time. However a
gradual shift can be brought through the use of PMO light by focusing on the
strengths of the process and allowing the employees to understand, accept and
adapt to the changed procedures. Culture plays perhaps the biggest role in
whether the organization is successful in executing projects. Managers,
including the head of the organization, need to step up and evaluate the
project culture. Until the culture changes, project managers will consistently
struggle to be successful.
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