Your Project Management Coach: Best Practices for Managing Projects in the Real World

Chapter 23

Running a Project Management Office

A project management office (PMO) is responsible for centralizing and coordinating project management within an organization. Often set up as a board or department, the intent of a PMO is to improve project success rates by standardizing and supporting project management practices in the organization.

In this chapter, you learn how a PMO can help an organization standardize and improve project management efforts. You also learn how to determine whether a PMO might be appropriate for your organization, and if so, how to determine the type of PMO needed and plan for its implementation.

Cross-Reference

The information in this chapter relates to the PMP Exam's Domain III: Executing the Project, Task 6, “Maximize team performance through leading, mentoring, training, and motivating team members.”

Defining PMO Functions

Your organization might decide that a PMO is needed to help improve its project success rates. This means not only helping more of your projects finish on time and under budget, but also helping more projects achieve their success criteria.

A PMO can help achieve these goals by defining and developing project manager support systems that deal with some or all of the following functions:

• Standards, processes, and best practices: The PMO can define and facilitate project management protocols, procedures, and templates to foster consistency in activities common to all projects, such as project proposals, change management, ...