PMO Best Practices

Now, those of you who read the hypothetical case study in my previous Blog may be wondering what might happen to our two intrepid professional project managers – the unrecognised prophets of “Company B”. As you know, in the scenario, the company might address its short-term crisis in property management by adopting an organisation structure...
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It is said that a prophet is never recognised in his/her own land. Let me hypothesise a case in point.   Two professionally-qualified project managers working for an organisation (“Company B” in the representational Model #1 below), with turnover in the billions, write a paper detailing why its major projects keep failing and what needs to...
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A while back I worked within an enterprise Project Management Office and had the job title “Special Projects Manager”. Now some of may see this as a glorified way to describe the guy who gets all the jobs that the Director doesn’t want to do!  And whilst you may be partially right, it did...
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A friend of mine recently emailed me, he had an interview and was being asked to present on the subject of the Benefits of a PSO and wanted to know if I could help him. My immediate reaction was that I could easily present on the benefits, but then I got thinking, what really...
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Because there are so many theories floating around as to why PMO’s fail, it is sometimes hard to know where to start! I have found a good place to begin is often with people’s experiences and observations. Here are some reasons for PMO failure that I have put together based on conversations with other...
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What are the ideal skills and competencies of a PMO Director that make him/her successful on the job? Here are some of my thoughts; I welcome any input from blog readers. First of all, let me start by saying that not every PMO is the same, so perhaps some of the skills and competencies might...
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According to Second World War historians, Winston Churchill wanted all of his progress reports on only one sheet of paper. Given the huge ahead of him at that time, it’s understandable that he did not want to be distracted with large amounts of paper! Perhaps we could learn from his practices. Although a lot of...
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What has the P3O® (Portfolio, Programme Project Offices) guidance that was published in 2008 by the UK Office of Government Commerce got to do with Yin and Yang? The Chinese ancients believed that Yin and Yang is the interplay of opposites and stresses the importance of balance. “All things connote the Yin and the Yang,...
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There is a contradiction at the heart of many PMOs. Who is the master of an office for management of project or programme? There is a choice of at least two who have different focus and thus needs. I have run/set-up several large PMOs over the years during which time I’ve seen that I had to...
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