Setting up a PMO – Phase 1 – Current State

Alright!! So you are all looking forward to setting up the PMO in your org. So, how do you really go about it. As you would have read in my previous article on Setting up the PMO, the right way, there are steps and phases that can help guide you to successfully set-up and run the PMO.

In this article, lets focus on how to get started.

The 1st phase is crucial in the sense that we need to assess the current state or phase of the PMO. So we need to ask questions like do we have a PMO in place already? If yes, what is the maturity level of the PMO in terms of handling governance, Centre of Excellence or delivery of projects/programs. For this one needs to carry out certain activities to get a clear picture instead of going with a guess work or perceived idea.

So, here are a few guidelines to help assess the current phase:

• What specific problems are being solved by the current PMO setup that exists (if that is the case). Else list out the expectations for the PMO. For this, one needs to have a series of discussions with senior leadership team.
• Map and Understand your current stakeholders with respect to the expectations from PMO.
• Understand the necessity of the PMO. This is crucial from the point of view of understanding the key objectives of the PMO and helps set the expectations clearly. This is where we delve deeper into the role of the PMO.
• Is the PMO going to do governance only, or do consultancy and provide the right direction to the stakeholders in executing the projects, or will the PMO have a set of projects and/or program managers to actually do the planning, execution and reporting of the projects.
• Specific problems that needs to be resolved or addressed by the PMO. As an example, delayed projects, risks not being recorded or addressed, processes not in place or defined.