PMO: Know What It Is, What Are The Duties

What is the Project Management Office or Project Office? And if we mention PMO in the middle of a conversation, can you see what it is about?

If you are from a team unfamiliar with these terms, the time has come to understand what this department is and what functions this department has in organizational projects. In advance, we already guarantee a spoiler: the PMO enables close monitoring of the planning and execution stages of business plans.

Simply put, the Project Management Office (PMO) is the sector responsible for implementing and ensuring the maintenance of Project Management standards adopted by organizations. Having a PMO gives you security in optimizing processes and controlling execution steps—everything so that the company’s purposes obtain the desired success.

In times of great competitiveness in the business world, the department has even more value because even if market changes cannot be foreseen, the team of project managers manages to think of solutions so that the innovations are adopted in the shortest possible time.

But, after all, what is the purpose of the PMO in a company? Let’s explain: it is common for projects to fail to achieve some variables, such as scope, cost, and time. The department is committed to, for example, helping project managers to ensure that everything is completed on time and within budget.

PMOs also have other duties. The main ones are structuring reports on portfolios and projects; transfer of progress; portfolio-level schedule management, portfolio resources and risks; definition of methodologies; development of process improvements; determining metrics; distributing information and facilitating communication between teams, and sharing resources. It is possible to divide the PMO into three categories. Check out:

PMO Into Three Categories

Corporate PMO: Strategic PMO, or PMSO, is responsible for defining the corporation’s management standards; that is, it is related to all the company’s projects. In this sense, it has a stronger connection with organizational objectives. The Corporate Project Management Office manages the portfolio, signaling and prioritizing projects for executives.

Departmental PMO: also known as Tactical PMO, defines the standards of an area, a department, a board, or a unit of the organization. It is intended to support simultaneous projects within a specific part of the company. He is responsible for developing and implementing methodologies and prioritizing internal projects and departmental project managers.

Operational PMO: here, the objectives are particular and usually have a programmed working time. In such situations, the PMO may be called a Standalone or Project-Program. It is applied in projects with such a high level of importance and complexity that require elaborating specific standards.

In this case, the PMO remains separate from the organization’s operations. The knowledge and experience of the project manager and a more mature team help to achieve success.

At this point in the text, you might wonder: “what are the differences between a PMO and a project manager?” 

The Duties Of A PMO Can Be (Not Limited To This):

• Coordination of efforts so that the strategies are achieved;
• Improvement of shared resources among all the company’s projects;
• Provision of information regarding the projects under its control;
• Methodological support to project managers.

Examples of project manager responsibilities:

• Coordination of efforts to achieve specific project objectives;
• Control of project resources;
• Passing on information to interested parties about the performance of the project.

Seven Stages Of PMO Implementation In A Company

To work in a project office, you must know the general steps of implementing a PMO. The PMO implementation steps are:

• Create the project office according to the current structure of the organization;
• Engage and guide all those involved;
• Define the methods of action and analysis;
• Choose the pilot projects that will start the work of the office;
• Identify and meet hardware and software demands;
• Define procedures and methodologies;
• Introducing to the entire organization.

Put it like this, in list form, and the steps seem simple. But they involve the commitment of all company employees to change.

Also Read: Portfolio Management: Understand The Importance