All About Project Management Office (PMO), Plus PMO Templates and Examples
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What Is A PMO And Why Do We Need It?
Every company requires a strategic approach to ensure the standardized, successful, and smooth functioning of all the projects of a company. At the same time, every project also requires some standard processes, procedures, and methodologies to align the project objectives with the overall business objectives.
That’s where PMO comes into the picture. The Acronym PMO stands for Project Management Office. Think of Project Management Office as a regulatory body that is looking to standardize and introduce economies of repetition to the execution of the projects to maintain productivity.
In other words, It is a group that defines and maintains standards for project and program management within the organization.
What Are The Functions Of A PMO?
The PMO functions cannot be defined under a particular set of roles. Some of the PMO tasks and responsibilities include-
1. Establish a proper governance structure —
PMO ensures that the right people have the right roles and responsibilities in the project. This results in the right project structure and accountability in the project teams resulting in their proper functioning.
2. Resource Management -
Another important task of PMO is planning the resources across projects ensuring the optimal use of the company resources.
3. Project Reporting-
One of the core functions of PMO involves developing project metrics based on the best practices and implementing them across various projects to ensure project efficiencies and desired financial performance.
4. Standardization-
PMO keeps a record of all the best practices, resources, and templates used in the previous successful projects. This depository becomes a standard for future projects which helps project teams save time and effort.
5. Clarity
A PMO keeps transparency in information that is relevant and authentic and can be used for better decision making. This transparency can be regarding roles and responsibilities, organizational structure, objectives, etc.
6. Training, Mentoring, and Support-
PMO assists the projects by providing its valuable inputs in the form of training, sharing the past learnings, and providing any support required.
Different Types of PMO
The types are differentiated on the basis of how much they control and influence the projects. There are many types of PMO but the below three are the most common and recognized ones -
1. Supportive PMO
2. Controlling PMO
3. Directive PMO
Supportive PMO
Low Control
This type provides support upon request. They offer project expertise, templates, technical support, or information access on other projects. In this case, the PMO provides support without imposing control over the project activities.
Controlling PMO
Moderate control
This type of office imposes a moderate level of control over the projects and its activities. Projects might be required to adopt specific methodologies, templates, forms, governance structures, or other controlled sets of rules to ensure consistency across all the projects.
Directive PMO
High control
This type of PMO has high or full control over projects with providing required project management support and resources to manage the project. The PMO assigns project managers for each project. It provides a high level of professionalism, where every PM has to timely report to the PMO office ensuring consistency in workstreams across all the projects in the organization.
Benefits Of A PMO
- Better Accuracy- The PMO increases project planning accuracy in terms of resources, budget, and project completion time making sure that the project is less likely to fail.
- Saves Costs- With the help of PMO, projects are run at greater efficiency and productivity resulting in lesser project costs.
- Resource Sharing- PMO helps pool resources across projects in the organization. A PMO helps strategize the use of the desired resources across your project or program to best use them productively. In case there is a lack of talent pool, PMO takes up the responsibility of providing training programs to provide the required skills for each project.
- Acts as Facilitator- They have access to your clients or senior management in ways that you might not, and therefore can facilitate communications with them, both freeing you up for other work and making sure your message is delivered and understood.\
A few Examples of PMO Templates -
View this PMO objectives Templates
View this Project Management Status Dashboard Template
PMO Roles And Responsibilities Template
View Project Program Governance Template
View PMO Objectives Planning Template
View PMO Objectives Planning Template
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