It’s not always easy to convince senior stakeholders to invest in a program / project management office (PMO). After all, “it’s just project admin…..”.
There are two challenges with this view. The first being there is an obvious element of truth in the statement, and secondly, it’s actually rare to see a ‘real PMO’ in action that clearly demonstrates it’s organisational value.
PMOs fundamentally have an operational (and visible) component that involves ‘admin’ or program / project ‘support’. Onboarding new team members (setting up logon ids, security access), project facilities management (everything from meeting room and video-conference bookings, to office space allocations, etc), distributing reports, minutes and agendas, the list goes on and on.
The operational (or ‘admin’) functions of a PMO are obvious. However, ‘non-operational’ functions of a PMO are happening in every organisation as we read this. Bold statement? I say this because in my working career, which has included working in small start-ups to (what was) one of the biggest technology companies in the world, I am yet to encounter an organisation that:
- doesn’t want to maximise efficiencies
- is not concerned about improving delivery performance of their initiatives,
- is not executing multiple initiatives concurrently,
- is not sharing the organisation’s resources – funds, infrastructure, team members, or management attention,
- has no dependencies across multiple parts of the organisation,
- does not require as close to ‘real time’ information on status of initiatives,
- has no requirement for governance and tracking of funded initiatives, and
- doesn’t have changing priorities.
My point here is that obviously these functions are important and every organisation tries to focus and continually improve the management and control of them – they just may not be centralised and managed through a formal ‘PMO’.
So, if we accept that certain operational or ‘admin’ functions are required and happening on a daily basis, and that organisations are continually attempting to address the above management of organisational resources and priorities with their initiatives, at a minimum, ‘centralising’ these functions into a PMO is likely to provide even a basic efficiency gain, and over time, a level of capability uplift in these functions. However, the true value of PMOs aren’t just in ‘efficiency’ gains.
The ultimate goal of any PMO, whether it be at project, program or organisational (‘strategic’ PMO, or ‘SPMO’) level is to ultimately improve the delivery performance of both individual organisational initiatives, and the organisation’s overall delivery capability – that’s where the real value of PMOs are realised.
Capability uplift happens over time through (deliberately planned) continuous improvements in methods, processes and tools, and investing in the organisation’s delivery talent. Delivery capability improves when there is proactive management of delivery initiatives – ‘forward looking’ to risk mitigations, issue resolutions, dependency impacts which require true ‘delivery experience’ – rather than ‘admin’ experience. This is what a ‘real’ PMO does.
To realise the full potential value of PMOs, requires organisational commitment to their success, through acknowledgement, empowerment and investment.