IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 43, NO.
1, FIRST QUARTER, MARCH 2015
Project Management Office
—Celia Desmond
Vice President Membership
IEEE DOI 10.1109/EMR.2015.2393512
15
MANY companies have a
department, called a Project
Management Office, which works
with the project managers in
various ways. What is this Project
Management Office, or PMO, and
what do they do?
In fact, there are various models
for such an office, all valid,
with each bringing value to the
organization. The PMO is always
a center for project management
knowledge within the company,
and it is always used as a resource
to support and assist the project
managers. The PMO also acts as a
resource for the executives of the
organization, because they are
interested in the benefits that the
PMO provides. More on that later.
What is the PMO? This office
was initially introduced in
industries such as aerospace and
heavy construction, where the
companies ran multiple projects
in parallel and the success of
the projects was very critical.
The office was put in place to
ensure knowledge and use of
the best standards for project
management across all projects.
In order to improve overall project
success across all projects, the
offices looked for best practices,
and used these to introduce
standard company wide-project
processes.
This offices ensured that
all projects used the same
methodologies, with a focus
on the different process areas
such as communication, time,
cost, and scope management.
The offices measured the key
performance indicators which
are of interest to executives
in all companies—things like
time to market, project launch
to completion, efficiency of
work and optimization of staff
utilization, on-time completion,
within budget completion, even
satisfaction of customers and
of team members. Because of
this focus on key improvements,
the use of the office has now
expanded to almost every type of
industry, and the offices support
projects of every type, with
deliverables that are both internal
and external to the company.
The offices are not all set up
according to the same model.
In fact, there are three or four
models which are common.
Support—the PMO provides direct
support to the project managers
and project teams, in the form of
processes, measures and direct
manpower.
Directing—the PMO sets
the standards for project
management, defines the
processes and the measures, and
assesses the project work and
results.
Controlling—the PMO monitors
all project activities, and takes
action to control key parameters
related to cost, schedule, scope
and quality.
The PMO determines which
parameters should be measured,
and the measurement tools,
techniques and data often all
reside in the PMO. The PMO
also looks at documentation
to be used in managing the
projects, and often develops
and maintains forms and lists as
tools the project managers. The
PMO measures many parameters
and shares the KPI's with the
executives and staff. The PMO
often provides the training for the
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PM's both on the job and in the
form of courses.
Project Management Knowledge
is corporate IP. This knowledge
resides in the PMO. It may also
reside in other departments,
because sometimes the project
managers report into the PMO,
while sometimes they remain
in the functional departments.
In both cases the PMO provides
the knowledge, training, and
standards which the PM's use.
IEEE ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT REVIEW, VOL. 43, NO. 1, FIRST QUARTER, MARCH 2015
Because project teams frequently Please send your comments
need to use resources from or questions to me at
multiple different company (c.desmond@ieee.org).
departments, the PMO helps
to break down corporate silos,
building understanding of the
goals, functions and personnel of
other departments.
Overall, the benefits of the PMO
far outweigh the costs of staffing
the office, in payback in corporate
efficiency, client satisfaction and
staff effectiveness.