Building a successful PMO (Project Management Office) is one of the many strategies that organizations can employ to improve their overall performance and to achieve organizational excellence. This podcast episode covers best practices and key building blocks to build a successful PMO. If you already have a PMO then these practices can help you to improve your PMO’s governance and performance.

In this episode, we will cover the key building blocks of an organization’s PMO or Project Management Office. Due to the summarized nature of this session, we won’t be able to cover all those elements but the coverage of the essential building blocks will give you the foundational knowledge to start building a PMO from scratch or to reinforce the one that you already have with best practices. So, let’s get started.

Definition of the PMO

First, let’s revisit the definition of a PMO. A PMO or Project Management Office is a group within an organization or company that manages a group of projects or programs and other initiatives of the organization. PMO can refer to a Project Management Office if it only manages projects or it can also mean a Program Management Office, if the PMO’s scope is large to accommodate programs as well. In some cases, a PMO also refers to the Portfolio Management Office. However, we should note that while the Project and Program Management Office are quite similar in many ways, the Portfolio Management Office is very different. We will attempt to cover some of those differences a bit later in the podcast but for more details and information on Portfolio Management, you should look at other podcasts and articles on CIOtechCentral.com. If you subscribe to the podcasts, you will be able to listen to future episodes on Project and Portfolio Management as well.

Getting back to the PMO. The ‘management’ part of the PMO includes a number of areas. This may range from having little authority over the projects and programs where the PMO simply provides support for those projects and programs to actually having full authority to drive those projects and programs to completion. But regardless, a PMO brings in the use of best practices from the Project Management discipline and provides standardization and at times leadership for the planning, execution, control, and completion of projects and programs.

Next let’s look at Eight Foundation elements of a PMO. Again, [lease note that this is not an exhaustive coverage but these eight elements serve as the foundation for an PMO.

1.    Defining the key goals and type of the PMO

The first element that one should address before starting a PMO is to get clear on the goals of the PMO and the drivers behind its establishment within the organization. Even if you already have a PMO and you are looking to improve its performance, you should revisit the goals and objectives of your PMO. More specifically, the idea here is that you should become aware and clear on the business problems that your PMO is meant to solve. This clarity and knowledge is the driver behind the decision regarding the type of a PMO that one aspires for their organization. The PMI defines three types of PMOs. The “supporting PMO”, as the name implies, provides a methodology, tools, and templates support to other departments and groups within the organization that is driving projects. This type of a setup is common in organizations where functional departments take the responsibility of running their own projects and programs but look toward a centralized PMO to provide support to ensure standardization on the use of methodologies, tool support, templates, etc. The supporting PMO, therefore, has limited authority in the running of projects and programs and is not responsible for the delivery outcomes of projects and programs.

The second type of a PMO on the other end of the spectrum is the ‘Directive PMO’. Unlike the supporting PMO,