Exploring the benefits of a Project Management Office (PMO)

Rethinking project delivery to achieve successful results - How do we set ourselves up for success, first time round?

We all strive to achieve value for money when delivering our projects. How many times have we heard that we must deliver our projects to time, cost, and quality? Leaders and project managers are under constant pressure to ensure project outcomes and the desired benefits are efficiently realised. So, the key question is how do we set ourselves up for success the first-time round? Investing in a Project Management Office (PMO) can add significant value. If you already have an active PMO, checking for any gaps and areas for improvement against good practices considering the latest trends, insight, and success factors would be a worthwhile exercise.

If setup correctly a Project Management Office (PMO) can provide businesses with the level of governance and control required to successfully implement the most complex projects. Setting the foundations for the PMO cannot be underestimated, as is ensuring its procedures and processes are clear and easy to follow, and there is continued top level executive sponsorship. Those running the PMO should have an adequate level of authority to drive the agreed policies and procedures forward, any challenges in meeting the PMO objectives should be transparent to executives to ensure that sufficient controls are put into place – continued collaboration is essential.

One size doesn’t fit all. So that governance and project controls are setup according to the scale, size, and complexity of the project, I always encourage a pragmatic approach. It is important to set aside budget for PMO support activities, tracking and monitoring. Ultimately this will minimise risk of delay and substantial costs.  Incorporating PMO spend into an overall project budget will pay dividends. Having the right level of controls, governance, and prioritising these correctly will result in minimising a number of risks, play a significant role in a smooth quality implementation. As a result, this will uplift the confidence of key stakeholders, customers, and funders with quicker sight of the desired project outcomes. BDO PMO Services can conduct short and sharp PMO maturity, programme, and project assessments.

Sustaining levels of accountability PMO can help ensure that an appropriate project governance structure is in place, adherence to the key roles and responsibilities and that there is a sufficient level of accountability throughout the life cycle of the project. Resources from the ‘business as usual’ (BAU) environment are often brought into projects therefore it is vital to ensure their roles, activities, any changes to level of authority are clear as opposed to their Business-As-Usual role (BAU). Prior to committing to deadlines, it is valuable to ensure the right skills, capabilities and those who are brought into the project have a sufficient level of capacity. It is important to identify any resource gaps, opportunities for upskilling or investing in short term temporary resources to support those in-house. BDO PMO Services can provide short-term resources to work with businesses and provide guidance on how to setup a PMO. 

What’s in it for me? When setting off on a journey to realise change, sustaining engagement and interest is not an easy task. There will be different levels of apprehension to adopting new ways of working, albeit systems, processes or technical. Implementing business changes successfully requires change specialists to appropriately embed processes whilst tailoring to the culture and needs of the organisation. An important and ‘on-going’ task is investing time and energy in a robust change management strategy. Our team of change management Specialists can support development of change Strategies, share proven change methodologies, and align to good practices.

 For further information and the support our team are able to provide, please get in touch with Tim Foster,  or Monica Verma.