Project Management Office (PMO) fundamentals - Part II

– – When building the enterprise PMO we must think of the stakeholders that will sustain its operation, i.e. those that have a share in, or interest in, the products and services offered by the PMO that will provide benefit—provide value. Reflecting back on our value-chain discussion, our drawing (upper right) illustrates five PMO’s within a single organization supporting both primary and support activities. Who’s the customer?

Finance: the PMO-SOX was established to provide compliance with the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) act of 2002, i.e. as a publically traded company this PMO provides assurance in accounting oversight, corporate responsibility and financial disclosure. The customer is the board of directors and shareholders.

Operations: the PMO-SERVICES spans into finance and marketing by providing internal services that help sales in preparing proposals and statements of work; by reporting time and expenses and monitoring invoices/costs; and providing project managers with best-practices, process and tools. The customer is finance, operations and marketing helping control cost of sales, gross margin, and satisfaction metrics.

Law and Corporate Affairs: the PMO-PL01, or PMO for Product Line 01, to provide compliance with the European Union (EU) and Department of Justice (DOJ) prior to Release-to-Manufacture of their software product. The customer is the product group.

Information Technology: the PMO-IT provides assurance and governance in anaging the IT portfolio of capital and operational investments—building the right projects and building them right. The customers are the customers, partners, employees and shareholders.

Customer: the PMO is positioned to assist in the rapid deployment of technology and its productive use—to assure that the products that they purchased are deployed with minimum risk and attainment of business value. Important customer capital is
built in this relationship. The customers are the end-users and sponsor.

– – From a marketing standpoint, as Kotler & Armstrong (Principles of Marketing, 2010) state—customer-driven companies research current customers deeply to learn about their desires, gather new product and service ideas, and test proposed product improvements.” The PMO Architect must ask if they are relevant in their current offerings and if there is additional value to be had in their enterprise through building and supporting competency in project management. So the answer is one-to-many, i.e. an enterprise may begin with a single PMO and evolve to have those that may specialize, as in our examples, to facilitate a unique focus on the organization from building human capital, gleaning new perspectives in process and innovation capital, and deeper relationships through customer capital. In Fundamentals Part III we will discuss: how any one of the five PMOs discussed here could quickly provide value through a collection of high-value or essential-to-the-business business processes.