What scenarios would require a new Project Management Office (PMO)?
There is no single trigger for starting a PMO, but there are a few key signals to look out for that could mean it is time to start investigating whether a PMO might help improve delivery of change initiatives in your organisation.
Creating or refreshing a strategy – A PMO can help you to prioritise and plan the right initiatives to move the dial on a new or updated business strategy.
If you are starting a new transformation programme – When you’re looking at transforming the way that you do business, or the way that you deliver a service, and it will touch several different departments within your organisation, having a central PMO can be crucial to its success.
If you have been experiencing delayed or underperforming portfolios of change – If you’ve already put a structure in place and know what your change portfolio or roadmap looks like, but it is not being delivered as expected, a PMO can offer you greater visibility to ensure the right people have timely information to keep things on track.
When you need a single source of truth – If your organisation has no view of the value being delivered by your change initiatives, a PMO can help set the expectation on reporting information to stakeholders to celebrate the wins, highlight the risks, issues, and dependencies; and build a stronger overall reputation for the team delivering the initiatives.
If you have no clear, repeatable processes documented for best practice – One of the core functions of a PMO is to build a clear, repeatable end-to-end process for delivery of change. As the custodians of the right way of doing things, a PMO can take examples of best practice and create a simple, more efficient way of delivering initiatives.
When would you not need a PMO?
If you have a smaller organisation, it is likely that some of the duties of a PMO (for example, planning, quality assurance and governance) are being picked up by other people directly or indirectly involved in change delivery initiatives. No two businesses are the same, and it depends on the roles and responsibilities that have been defined in your organisation.
If you have a clear strategy in place, you understand how your change initiatives contribute to that strategy, and everybody is getting the information they need to make decisions and ensure successful delivery, then setting up a PMO might not be necessary at this point.
This blog post forms part of our Complete Guide to Setting up a PMO.
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