When an organization sets up a PMO for managing projects, it consciously or subconsciously has the expectation of the following goals or benefits from a PMO.
Functional goals
Structural goals
Disciplinary goals
Functional goals are mostly related to the functions the PMO is going to focus on. Is the PMO needed to set up just standards, or is it going to perform Governance, Delivery of projects or Running the Strategies of the projects. Sometimes, the PMO is set-up to perform multiple roles as well. As an example, while the PMO may set-up the governance model, it may also need to check if the governance model is effective or not and whether there is a need to make changes based on the feedbacks received or outputs observed.
Structural goals are to do with how PMO deals with People, Processes and what tools it can bring in for managing people and processes. People are the key assets in PMO. A PMO leader should carefully choose his team in order to ensure that the PMO role as well as the project management can be done effectively in line with the corporate culture and processes. Coming to processes, the approach can very much depend on the type of PMO team. Is it a small team that focuses on facilitating the processes and does more of a consultative role, or is it a relatively bigger team that also takes up managing the projects directly. Bigger PMO teams have dedicated project managers to execute the project as well. There are multiple tools available today to manage and track projects. It is imperative that tools should be carefully selected based on the organization type. One can go for public or private cloud based tools or sometimes a hybrid of tools to reach the objective. PMO plays an important role to ensure that the right set of tools are selected for project management.
Disciplinary goals are mostly to do with execution of projects, change management, resourcing, and communication with stakeholders. This is a crucial area. Irrespective of the governance model applied, the processes put in place and the level of planning done, a project is finally successful only if the teams ensure that they follow the processes well. And this needs good level of discipline and practices. Depending on the functional and structural setup of the PMO, the level of involvement into the disciplinary side can vary. But it is inevitable for the PMO to be complete without touching this important aspect. The PMO team would normally look into whether the projects are moving as per schedule and reaching the stage gates, following the change management process with proper traceability and logs/versions maintained, resourcing is optimal and there is no scope of under or over resourcing and ensuring that the right and proper communication goes out from the PMO department as and when needed.
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