When Does It Make Sense To Create A Project Management Office?
When Does It Make Sense To Create A Project Management Office?
By Michael Wood
It is considered the right time to start a PMO (Project Management Office) when one or more of the below factors is present:
- Poor project delivery track record
- Lots of simultaneous projects and Project Managers
- Projects are highly complex and time sensitive
- Impact of failure is high (loss of competitive position, community embarrassment, etc.)
- Missing delivery dates spells enterprise disaster (i.e. opening a casino on time)
- IT Compliance to governance standards is important or mandatory
Michael Wood is the Subject Matter Expert on IT Strategy and Business Process Improvement for www.gantthead.com. His “Helix Factor” book series presents a comprehensive Business Process Improvement methodology that has been used successfully since the early 1980s to help organizations achieve breakthrough results. Michael is a CPA and has served as an adjunct professor for Pepperdine and Cal Lutheran universities in Southern California. In addition he has led workshops on Business Process Improvement, Strategic Planning and System Design on a national and international basis.
Is anyone seeing PMOs creating in local government?
Excellent short list!
I would add that a PMO is also very useful for managing a large number of similar small projects. This situation commonly arises in web design, for example.
I am currently advising a client on this topic and wrote a short post/article that briefly explains why PMO makes sense for small projects.
http://www.brunocollet.com/blog/index.php?blog=5&title=managing_small_it_projects