What is a PMO?/ Why Do You Need a PMO (Project Management Office)?

What is a PMO? A project management office (PMO) is a team or department that sets and maintains standards for project management throughout an organization. The PMO is in charge of creating procedures and best practices that will help operations: Go smoothly. Complete on time.

What is a PMO

In this article, we have seen that the Project Manager and PMO are two different entities in Project Management. The Project Manager’s role is higher than that of PMO and the PMO works under the Project Manager. Joining a large, program-level PMO is an excellent opportunity to further develop project management skills. Large programs, especially global programs, have many projects and work streams that require issue management, risk management, and change management across multiple teams.

To pursue a career as a PMO lead, you typically need at least a bachelor’s degree in business or a related field and extensive work experience in a similar role. Some employers prefer candidates with a master’s degree and professional certification. Most PMOs have no portfolio functions, do not take part in project selection, and do not own project resources. However, the organization tends to continuously trickle more work, coverage areas, responsibilities, and projects into the scope of the PMO, and the PMO finds itself having to manage more with less.

What is a PMO?

A project management office, or PMO, ensures a company’s operations are on time and on budget. A PMO can help increase productivity by providing planning, organization, and leadership. Even if a company’s existing project management teams are efficient, it may want a PMO for other reasons, such as improving time management, company alignment, or monitoring of procedures and practices. In this article, we answer some frequently asked questions about PMOs, including what they are and who uses them, their pros and cons, and whether you need one or not.

A PMO is a group of people who guide and oversee project management for a company. This group helps standardize projects for an organization and implements best practices for project management. PMOs can lead project managers by holding meetings or performance reviews to ensure project managers are guiding their teams efficiently. They can also handle both current and future projects for companies.

Some tasks of a PMO include:

Aligning projects with the company’s vision
Training project managers
Standardizing methods and procedures
Creating project proposals
Increasing visibility of project processes

Performance

There are many reasons for project failures. As per a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey of 1,524 organizations, inadequate project estimating and planning to constitute 30% of project failures, lack of executive sponsorship constitutes 16%, and poorly defined goals and objectives constitute 12%.

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 drive successful project delivery.

Darling & Whitty (2016) found there is the complexity of interconnections in PMO intellectual capital and though often the rationale for PMO establishment is to enhance stakeholder satisfaction with projects often the establishment of the PMO leads to significant dissatisfaction by senior management.

Who uses PMOs? A company with product or project teams might have a PMO to oversee processes. Companies or businesses that handle multiple projects may also use a PMO, which can delegate projects to the company’s teams or prioritize which projects the teams should complete first.

Large companies might use PMOs to help organize their project processes, while smaller companies might use PMOs to further expand their businesses.

When do you need a PMO?

Here are some reasons you might use a PMO:

1. Better collaboration

A PMO can ensure or improve unity and collaboration among team members or between teams. While independence can be a valuable quality, project teams often succeed through collaboration. PMOs can increase collaboration because they encourage project managers to work more closely with their team members. They may do this by assigning team projects or asking project managers to have more meetings with their teams.

Collaboration means two or more people working together to achieve a goal. Studies have found that working together makes people more motivated and helps them perform much better. People who are collaborating on tasks stay interested for longer, feel less tired, and get better results than people who are working alone.

2. Better accountability

A PMO can help increase accountability by performing team evaluations, which can help keep team members accountable for their responsibilities. PMOs can also create project budgets for better financial accountability and communicate with customers about the company’s products to establish quality and ensure customer satisfaction.

5 Tips to Increase Accountability

Recognize Your Own Mistakes
Involve Employees in the Goal-Setting Process.
Make Expectations Clear.
Ensure Necessary Resources.
Provide Candid Feedback.

3. Better transparency

PMOs can help your project teams have better transparency. Projects often require visibility and transparency among project teams, other departments, and stakeholders. PMOs can communicate with teams and team members about their tasks and with stakeholders about the projects’ progress, which can help promote visibility.

If everyone is aware of project processes, they may better understand how to complete the task or what the project may involve.

Here are some tips to get you started.

Treat Your Employees Like Adults – And Be Honest. Employees aren’t fragile.
Don’t Fake It – If You Aren’t Sure, Say So. We’re humans.
Know When To Keep Something To Yourself.
Close the Gap Between Employee Knowledge Levels.
Be Prepared to Explain Your Decisions.

4. Better time management

A PMO organizes and delegates individual tasks so that project teams can complete projects by their deadlines. A smaller workload can be more manageable for team members, so they may get more work done more quickly. Having better time management skills can also help increase a team’s overall productivity levels.

Try some of these 10 techniques to improve time management:

Start your tasks early.
Set limits for what you’ll say yes to.
Give yourself breaks.
Prioritize your tasks.
Schedule your tasks and deadlines.
Organize your workplace.
Learn your patterns of productivity.
Use technology to help keep you accountable.
Focus on one task at a time.
Reinforce your good habits.

5. Better company alignment

PMOs can help ensure projects align with the company or brand and that multiple projects are coherent with each other. They do this by overseeing and planning each project according to the company’s vision or intended message.

For example, if the company wants to make commercials to promote a product, the PMO might ensure the producers align the commercials with the company’s overall tone.

Seven keys to improving your company alignment

Take a key role in communicating company strategy
Connect everyday tasks and efforts to long term goals
Encourage all employees to commit to your strategies
Consider alternative meeting schedules
Recognize and reward your employees’ strengths
Transparency is key
Encourage transparency from the top

What are the benefits of PMOs?

Here are some potential benefits of having a PMO:

1. Increased leadership

A PMO can provide project teams and project managers with additional leadership because the PMO handles more tasks and responsibilities while guiding what the project team does. They strategize and plan projects, which can help the project team execute their roles.

PMOs track multiple projects’ processes and developments, ensuring their teams complete tasks on time. They also motivate and encourage team members, which can increase satisfaction within the team.

How to improve leadership skills

Make a plan.
Be passionate.
Model great leadership for others.
Don’t ignore your strengths.
Set concrete goals and execute them.
Admit when you fail and move on.
Inspire others.
Find your higher purpose.

2. Improved adaptability

Another key role of a PMO is improving adaptability among the projects and within the teams. This means that if challenges occur, the PMO is flexible and can usually change something or adapt processes to resolve an issue.

They may also create alternative plans to resolve potential issues in advance, such as creating a more efficient project process.

How to develop your adaptability skills

Learn from others.
Find the silver lining.
Be willing to make mistakes.
Ask questions.

3. Minimized errors

A PMO can help to reduce errors or mistakes because they may provide an extra level of protection and maintenance for project processes. Since they specifically oversee projects, PMOs can identify and fix mistakes as they happen or sometimes before they happen.

Use instruments of higher precision. Improve the experimental techniques. Adjust the zero of the instruments properly. The value of the reading by standing straight to the instrument has been taken and not from the sides to avoid Parallax errors.

PMOs can ensure standardization among projects, which may help decrease errors because if project teams repeatedly use effective processes, mistakes may be less likely to occur.

4. Better productivity

One of the main reasons to have a PMO is to increase team productivity. PMOs often prioritize important deadlines and delegate tasks to team members to ensure the completion of projects runs smoothly and efficiently. They can run tests on projects to see if a certain process works better than others.

It’s a productivity killer. Research shows that productivity can be reduced by as much as 40% by the mental blocks created when people switch tasks. Instead, dramatically increase productivity by giving your full attention to one task at a time.

A PMO might also hold meetings or send surveys to the project team to ask for feedback about increasing the team’s productivity levels.

What are the drawbacks of PMOs?

Although PMOs provide a lot of valuable assets to a company, they also can have some drawbacks, including:

Less relevancy: PMOs may become less relevant because of technology and artificial intelligence that completes similar tasks, such as project management tools or programs. However, PMOs can communicate directly with team members, give presentations to stakeholders and answer questions regarding projects or teams.
Added costs: Hiring a PMO can require additional costs because hiring people and providing resources and tools for them costs money. However, because a PMO can focus on improving the quality and quantity of projects, it can ultimately increase the company’s sales.
Resistance to change: Project teams and managers may prefer their own project management styles over the PMO’s methods. To reduce this resistance to change, the PMO can communicate with project teams to build positive relationships. Once the PMO shows its value to the company, the project teams may be more likely to collaborate with them.