Program Management Office: It’s only as good as you want it to be

Is the PMO function in your organization a powerless function managing mundane administrative & project management tasks? Is it treated as a mere data collector?  OR is it powerful enough to help execution teams and line managers decode the strategic goals and translate them into executable project goals?  Does the PMO actively manage strategic aspects like the project portfolio? Does it enable the senior management team to understand the grass root performance issues? 

It would be heartening if your answer to the last three questions is a “YES”.  Most organizations struggle to establish a strong and a strategic PMO. I think the main reason for this is ambiguity of the purpose of the PMO in the organization and lack of CXO level sponsorship.  

As per the survey by PMO Executive Council Research, the top 3 reasons why organizations invested to build an enterprise program management office were: 

I think that there are more long term benefits to be reaped by making your PMO a “Strategic” function: For e.g.  Achieving strategic alignment of operations (project portfolio management), deeper and broader visibility into business performance and health, Business Context based governance and resource planning. Therefore I think that ideally organizations should look at the strategic PMO owning and facilitating the following activities:

 

Now how do organizations empower their PMO’s to be more effective and drive the necessary momentum in the execution – the answer to that is the following high level transition process which can take up to two years to achieve a steady state of operation.  The transition is not an easy process and  requires serious commitment and sponsorship from senior management. 

 

I believe that senior leaders are continuously looking for ways to improve the efficiency and productivity of the organization, but their focus largely rests on improving the technical aspects of product development and the efficiency of management operations is mostly overlooked.  I think that transitioning the PMO into a strategic role offers immense potential benefit in terms of higher efficiency and reduced costs over a longer term of operation. The question is how many organizations are really willing to look at their PMO seriously.