How to establish a project management office (PMO): Professional Paper

How to establish a project management office (PMO): Professional Paper - Kindle How to establish a project management office (PMO): Professional Paper.
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The PMO is the source of documentation , guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution. There are many reasons for project failures. It also found that using established project management approaches increased success as measured by a project's key performance indicators of quality, scope , schedule , budgets and benefits.

The survey indicates that operating an established PMO is one of the top three reasons that drives successful project delivery. PMOs may take other functions beyond standards and methodology, and participate in Strategic project management either as facilitator or actively as owner of the Portfolio Management process.


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  4. What is a PMO?!
  5. leondumoulin.nl | Science, health and medical journals, full text articles and books.;
  6. Supporting your Project Online adoption with a Project Management Office (PMO) | Microsoft Docs.
  7. Archives of Neuroscience - Project Management Office in Clinical Research Projects.

Tasks [4] may include monitoring and reporting on active projects and portfolios following up project until completion , and reporting progress to top management for strategic decisions on what projects to continue or cancel. The degree of control and influence that PMOs have on projects depend on the type of PMO structure within the enterprise; it can be:. There are a range of PMO types, including: From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The s project office was a type of national governance of the agricultural industry appears as the earliest instance of the term 'project management office' being published The s concept of the PMO is representative of what a contemporary PMO looks like Today the PMO is a dynamic entity used to solve specific issues [1] Often PMOs base project management principles on industry-standard methodologies such as PRINCE2 or guidelines such as PMBOK [2].

If you have already assessed the need for your PMO, this will be much easier to create. Look at your company's existing mission statement, and try to create one that aligns with it as well. It does not need to be overly complex, but just enough to provide all a basic understanding of why the PMO exists and what its role is in your company. After scoping out the tasks you need to build your PMO, you might want to create a high-level project plan for it. Consider the building of your PMO as one big project, with associated tasks, durations, and assignments.

Your project plan will become more defined as you step through some of the initial tasks, such as assessing your environment. The project plan helps to give your PMO a build schedule to keep track of what you have done, what you are working on, and what you have yet to do in creating your PMO. If you do not already have a PMO, you may be intimidated a bit at the thought of starting one.

Although your company's needs and requirements will drive your PMO, you need to learn how to create the framework to establish and evolve your PMO. Depending on your goals, you might want to research the various PMO process and industry methodologies, or see which PMO model you might closely align with. There are many books, training, and online resources available about creating and managing PMOs that can help you in your efforts. We also have in-house consultants at Microsoft with excellent experience at setting up PMOs for small, medium, and large companies.

So, are you ready to start your PMO? Hopefully, you've realized after reading this article that starting a PMO is an investment that will be well worth the time and effort. It will require a lot of collaboration with people in your company, and having an executive "champion" is essential. It will also require an investment in researching more about setting up a PMO through the many resources that are available.

If you are in a smaller company, the scope of all of this may seem overwhelming. You may not have the resources to hire people for each PMO role noted in the "Build your team" table, and you don't need to. Just be aware that these are responsibilities that will likely need to be addressed at some point in time, and to a degree that suits your requirements. Also note that the effort needed can scale to your company size and goals. A PMO in a smaller company might only need to meet with a few senior project managers in their company to assess their needs, versus multiple departments with varied requirements in a larger company.

Good luck in your implementation!

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Our new feedback system is built on GitHub Issues. Read about this change in our blog post. Some of the examples might be: My executives want better visibility into project status. I need a better way of managing my resources and assigning them to projects. I want to easily track the time people are spending on their tasks. I want more robust way to track project data than using Excel spreadsheets. What does a PMO do? The common goals of all PMOs, however, would include: Driving and evangelizing the project management system adoption. Creating policies, procedures and best practices around project management functions.

Let's take a step back and use an example that people can relate to - how a head of household might take care of their own family: This might involve researching reporting needs, moving required data to the system, and establishing workflows to ensure that the data required for recurring reports makes it to the system in time. The heads of the household will need information on how things are going: The PMO creates processes to get the right data to the project management system to provide status at a project level to project managers.

It also provides guidance and best practices for resource management. People in the family will need to know who's doing what. It helps to show everyone's work and school schedule, and availability, on a central family calendar. This way it is easy to know who can be scheduled for what. The PMO helps to create project collaboration sites and customize them to best suit the needs of the site users. Family members will need a forum in which they can collaborate, such as: The PMO is responsible for setting up a system to handle risk management.

Heads of the household might need to plan to reduce risk: Purchase a health club membership. The PMO looks at current processes and workflows, and finds a method of automating them through the project management tool being implemented.

How to Setup a Successful PMO - Part 1

One of these might involve determining drivers for selecting which projects to move forward on given a set budget portfolio analysis. Heads of household will establish rules and processes for the family, such as: A PMO drives a company to more efficient project management by doing things such as: Managing the technical challenges of change by offering great training options.

Why do I need a PMO? What are the first steps in creating a PMO?

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In creating a path to formalizing your PMO, you should consider the following: Obtain executive sponsorship Make sure someone up high supports you. Build your team Whether you are trying to establish a PMO in a large or small company, the following are responsibilities that need to be addressed by the roles in your PMO: Role Description Drive the Project Online adoption plan If you are in the process of implementing Project Online, the overall plan needs someone to drive it.

Just like any project, the adoption plan needs an owner to ensure that the required tasks are staffed and completed. Research project management needs This person will assess the project management requirements of your organization. This person will need to talk with users throughout the company and across departments to find out how they currently manage projects, what their requirements will be, and how these might be improved through the implementation of Project Online.

What does a PMO do?

These requirements will need to be expressed to the Project administrator so that they can be properly implemented into Project Online. This person must have good project management skills, but should also be someone who is a good communicator. It is quite possible that people in the company may be emotionally attached to the process you are trying to move them from, so this person will need to be able to deal with this by showing how the new system will make life easier for them.

Training, documentation, and support This person will need to assess the skill level of the users, and will be responsible for providing the training resources needed to use the product successfully.

Supporting your Project Online adoption with a Project Management Office (PMO)

This might include creating role-based training for Project administrators, project managers, team leads, and team members. While most of your effort might be in putting together training for project managers or administrators, team leads and team members might find quick reference cards, cheat sheets, checklists or short tutorials to be the most effective.

You will also need to find a way to provide in-house support for your users, and a method to escalate more complicated issues through the proper routes.