The best program management offices provide accountability, and structure, and enable the office to provide centralized services for standard practice across a wide range of projects. They also include critical elements required for managing and leading people.
The PMO office organization must include all roles required to properly support program risk and complexity. Be sure to include not only Project Managers, but also oft overlooked roles like quality, resource manager, portfolio manager, cost engineers, estimator, master scheduler, business analysis, project controls, portfolio manager, procurement, and PPM tool superuser.
The organization should be able to develop project staff. Development includes programs for training and education in specialty areas, program management in general, customer business systems, domain expertise, and non-technical topics such as leadership, teamwork, and communication. Training can be formal or informal, internal or external, in-person or remote, and individual or as a team. Development also includes processes for internal and/or external professional certification to demonstrate proficiency to business owners and the enterprise.
The organization must have rewards and recognition as a priority. It establishes the office as the authority to recognize performance, and sets standards for the entire resource base. It shows employees that the organization understands job satisfaction and that individual efforts are noticed. The organization should document roles and responsibilities for every position, and establish a career path policy to describe employees’ options for growth. Providing opportunities for career growth improves retention and reduces attrition.
An effective PMO organization develops, maintains and upgrades scalable recommended practices for use throughout the enterprise. The office maintains a collection of templates for standard project management applications, and advises practitioners in their appropriate use. In addition, the office should maintain detailed SOPs to describe inputs and outputs for each process, and the integration of all processes that makeup an overall framework.
The organization has a key role in compiling data for consolidated reporting by business unit, portfolio, date, and other key metrics. The office should specify a single reporting tool and training, maintenance, and compliance associated with its use.
The office has a unique responsibility to measure and report the value of program management and the PMO organization. The PMO will be able to contribute only as long as the rest of the enterprise recognizes that it adds value. For that reason, the PMO must identify and quantify PMO (not project) performance metrics, and regularly report how and where improvements are being made that directly contribute to overarching business goals.