It might be wise for anyone wishing to improve their organization's task capacities to take stock of the PMO functions they already have. A lot of models for PMOs can be found to help you better understand the needs of your organization and how building certain capacities and competencies in your task office can help. Generally there are as many PMO models as there are PMOs, so designing a specific understanding of what functions your PMO must have to best support the business is important to be successful.
One model I used to like compares various project management offices with familiar functions. For example, the job office can be seen as a weather credit reporting office, reporting status information and giving insight into the health of assignments. Or as a light-house, providing assistance to assignments in the form of guidance, processes and best practices as they complete through their life circuit.
While the pictures created by these comparisons are illustrative, I find they don't hit the toenail on the head when it comes to broaching the PMO as a key organizational and strength aspect intended to support the business enterprise. Increasingly companies, especially larger ones, are seeking to develop PMOs which integrate project and business processes.
We see this with the trend in recent years toward 'Enterprise' or 'Corporate' project management offices. These seek to addresses integration issues linked to the functional silos of the top organizations, or to align projects to business strategy, as well as to provide awareness on project spending and achieved value through various reports and dashboards. A large number of provide support publishing guidelines, procedures and guidelines. Other folks manage the project life cycle and integrate this to the device development life cycle, as well as to other key business processes linked to change and change management. Yet others fashion themselves as the center of excellence and central point of contact for the business. Still others concentrate only on staffing PMs or on financial coverage or vendor management.
Several try to do it all! But realistically can an individual PMO do it all?
Well not until it's very mature. Certainly not unless the business it supports needs it to.
Recently I've come across another model. It's provided in a book named The Complete Project Administration Office Handbook, by Gerard Hill. The model in the book presents a comprehensive go through the project management office competency continuum. This presents the PMO and related functions and ideas with a pro-business slant. The book details over 20 functions and efficient areas, which collectively consist of the competencies a business may choose to support in their PMO.
What My spouse and i like about Gerard Hill's competency continuum is that it reminds us, first, that alignment of task activities to the business objectives is essential to making sure that tasks deliver value. Second, that to be successful a PMO must do a good-job at whatever set of functions it performs to support the corporation. And finally, these functions must help assure projects deliver that value which is necessary for the business to meet its objectives.
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