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Project Management Office
PMO as a strategic success factor for project-based organisations
Abstract
Project-management-based organisations with either large PMOs can support project-oriented organisations at different
or numerous projects can profit from a range of benefits by levels and across project boundaries, reduce the required
establishing a Project Management Office (PMO). Having a resources and increase the information transfer from project
PMO in place can increase efficiency and effectiveness within to project. This whitepaper will introduce three different
projects as well as the maturity of Project Management. approaches standard, extended and state-of-the-art PMO
and list their preconditions, advantages and disadvantages.
Contents
1. Management Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Defining PMO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
6. Extended PMO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
7. State-of-the-Art PMO . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
9. Bibliographical References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
1. Management Summary
These days, projects tend to differ regarding their scope, 1.2. PMO and Efficiency/Effectiveness
budget, timeframe, etc., but if you take a closer look at how
they are organised, they dont actually differ that much. Over Irrespective of methodology, the set-up for projects will be
the last few decades, the way project management has been the same from one project to the next, and it depends on the
approached has dramatically changed, but the way projects managements requirements.
are organised has merely been adapted to potential political
changes concerning surrounding organisations. The greatest influence on effectiveness and efficiency, however,
is to be found at the level of the Project Management Office
(PMO). Only small organisational units or portfolios are aware
1.1. Organising Projects of dependencies between projects, or of the parallel development
of the same product multiple times (same thing, different names).
While within project management optimisation has taken place
on different levels (moving away from Waterfall to Agile or from Having a PMO in place not only reduces the required resources
basic project schedules to standards such as the PMBOK), the (e.g. one PMO/QAP/CM/RM/TM/Tester dealing with several
processes and related organisational structures pertaining to projects rather than just one), it also increases the information
projects have never been updated to current needs in a similar transfer from project to project and from portfolio to portfolio,
way. The main reason for this may be that a project, whether thus preventing parallel development and redundancies.
IT-based or not, usually has a rather short lifetime of six months
up to three years maximum. Once a project and process maturity
model has been taken on board and best-practice gathering is 1.3. PMO and Maturity
established and institutionalised, the optimisation of project
management within a company usually stops. Roles and respon- The crucial question for the management is the following:
sibilities are defined, documents and templates established. Is there no easy way to increase maturity within the Project
Management of a company or an organisational unit? Is it
Maturity-based models promising to increase the efficiency and always necessary to train and involve everyone in order to
effectiveness of projects are currently in vogue. Depending on raise the maturity level? And if not, how can the experience
the size of the organisation, a large number of employees must of more mature organisational units be leveraged for the entire
be trained to raise its maturity, new roles have to be initiated company?
and authority to be adopted. Each role must be trained, new
templates and guidelines have to be introduced and enforced The PMO approach might be the answer to these questions.
(depending on the specific maturity model and its integration), Establishing a State-of-the-Art PMO will allow a company to
and finally the processes to be institutionalised need to be train only the PMO staff (for instance, three persons like a
introduced, trained and assessed. Quality Manager, a Requirements Manager, and a Test Manager)
rather than the entire project staff within the required timeframe
The usual approach is to train all the employees, introduce in order to enhance or establish maturity according to e.g.
all the templates, documents and guidelines, and all the CMMI V1.2 ML2.
processes for all the roles. Depending on the size of the
company or organisational unit, this approach consumes a The result will be the same (maturity level reached), but the
considerable amount of resources (i.a. time, staff, procedures, costs will differ considerably (up to 70% less).
and consultants). The business case generally requires a long-
term perspective and regular upgrades as well as training of all
employees due to changes in templates, processes and so on.
2. Defining PMO
The PMO (Project Management Office) is an organisational unit to centralise and coordinate Project Management
activities. The PMO ensures project management excellence within an organisation.
Delimitation: A Project Manager can hand over all tasks to the PMO, but not the responsibility.
Definition 1: PMO
Cost savings and a reduction of overhead costs are part of the All in all, the introduction of a state-of-the-art PMO allows for
daily business for project-oriented organisations. Overhead cutting project costs by around 10% while at the same time
costs can easily be cut by 20% with an in-depth review and achieving better delivery quality and fewer errors in production,
a suitable approach (Plowman, 2012). Best practices show a leaner people management for the entire company, leaner
that a holistic review taking the organisational approach into organisation, faster time-to-market, higher maturity, and
account will yield the best results, not only with regard to the invaluable profits such as improved knowledge management,
persistence of the savings but also concerning the acceptance better collaboration, and employees with higher productivity.
of the related organisational units and roles.
The ten largest financial companies (SQS, 2011) generate an
An empirical study carried out at a large enterprise in the overall IT budget of more than 15 billion, the IT project part
financial industry indicated that the roles of being about 50% or approximately 8 billion. With regard to
the estimation on this company acting as a single global player
Project Manager
in the financial industry, the result is as follows (see Figures 1
Quality Manager and 2):
8,000
8,000 Budgets
Savings
6,000
4,000
2,016
2,000 1,120
896
403
0
Project Overhead Costs of PMO Savings with Classic Possible
Portfolio Size Measurements PMO-savings
100.0
100 Costs in %
80 Savings in %
60
40
25.2
20 11.2 14.0
5.0
0
Project Overhead Costs of PMO Savings with Classic Possible
Portfolio Size Measurements PMO-savings
The overall IT project budget for all industries amounts to more Missing awareness of the possibilities
than 1,000 billion. In other words: savings of over 250
No know-how available on the market
billion are possible if state-of-the-art PMOs are established.
Projects are being used to have a PMO,
Currently, the service industry is not responding to this demand instead of the other way round
and no company is offering a PMO service. There are several
Missing awareness of alternative approaches
reasons for this:
The outlook will be extremely positive if the opportunity is taken.
Projects are generally set up in the same way (see Figure 3). In the light of these challenges, the international project
The Project Manager leads a designing group consisting of management community in the late 1990s and early 2000s
Architects and Requirements Managers, a developing group initiated the PMO model: a management layer introduced
including some configuration experts, and a quality assurance between the Project and the Portfolio Management. The
group, usually staffed with Testers as well. Often, the projects scope of the PMO layer is to provide training and support,
report directly to the Portfolio Management. control projects and streamline project reporting. While this
PMO function was introduced in the Anglo-American region
as designed, in most European countries the PMO approach
was only adopted for administrative usage. In Europe, the PMO
Project Manager function resembles a personal assistance function focused on
organising meetings, rooms, etc. Therefore, the PMO has been
Quality positioned as reporting to the Project Manager (see Figure 4).
Assurance
Project Manager
Design/RE Realisation Test
Quality PMO
Assurance
Figure 3: Basic set-up for a project
The full scope of a PMO as specified in the definition comprises: The above-mentioned tasks and this type of organisational
structure do support projects within a portfolio and/or a
Support planning
programme as well as a standing organisation. The set-up
Support of project controlling allows leveraging of standard processes in Project Management,
such as stakeholder management, reporting, controlling,
Support of project reporting
planning, and resource management.
Ensuring reporting to the relevant stakeholders
This standard PMO approach ensures an effective way to run
Escalation to and coordination with the upper
a PMO. Moreover, it supports the minimum level of maturity
management level
for basic project management functions like i.a. reporting and
Review and controlling of the Stakeholder Management planning.
The reporting line runs from the projects to the PMO (see Reduction of redundancies (1 PMO for several projects)
Figure 5).
Common services provided to different projects
Portfolio/Programme
Management
6. Extended PMO
Once a standard PMO for projects has been established, the The following core activities have to be ensured by the PMO:
latter can be standardised more and more. Maturity models
Multi-Project Controlling & Reporting according to defined
like CMMI based on PMBOK or PRINCE2 require the projects
internal standards (incl. CAPEX and bookkeeping)
compliance in all aspects. This is just one of the tasks normally
assigned to Project Managers. PM Quality Assurance, i.e. planning for quality assurance
and testing
In order to support the Project Managers, the PMO is assigned
Project Portfolio Management
the ensurance of compliance. Therefore, the PMOs responsi-
bilities have to be extended (see Figure 6).
The supporting activities are as follows:
Portfolio/Programme
Management
This approach enables the leverage of common resources like Reduced project risks due to standardised QA and PM
Quality Assurance and the PMO, ensures backup for Project reporting (KPIs)
Managers (they can be replaced by the PMO for a certain time),
Standardised Stakeholder Management
and establishes a common Project Management environment.
In addition, Portfolio Management may also be included. Increased efficiency
Increased effectiveness
This extended PMO approach is perfectly suited to establish
the institutionalisation of project maturity through PMOs. The Common services and resources provided to different
advantages of this approach are as follows: projects
Significant increase in quality of all project deliverables due Extended standardised project management deliverables
to overall Project and Quality Management planning
Extended standardised internal processes/procedures
Reduced redundant functions (1 PMO/1 Quality Manager
Introduction and institutionalisation of capability maturity
for all projects)
level models supported
Knowledge Management enabled
A disadvantage of this approach is the following:
Interfaces within the organisation documented and
communicated Introduction of standard PMO required
7. State-of-the-Art PMO
The tendency to leverage a PMO to the greatest possible extent may help to take a look at project life cycles, in this case based
is constantly rising. In order to understand this approach, it on the example of a waterfall model (see Figure 8).
During a project life cycle (irrespective of which project approach These (intermediate) project deliverables are not within the
is being followed), project deliverables are established by scope of the PMO.
different roles for different project sequences (see Figure 9).
Incorporation, tools, common project management deliverables and roles in the project
Project Logistics
Including Requirements and Test Management in the scope has both process areas is not only possible but depending on the
additional advantages. Well-defined requirements result directly maturity of the individuals and/or internal processes also
in improved test cases; consequently, sharing one resource for feasible.
Portfolio/Programme
Management
This approach also requires an advanced technical maturity, for The preconditions for this approach are as follows:
instance involving the use of common planning and reporting
Support of top management required (maturity level of
platforms (e.g. MS Project Server or equivalent, repositories),
Project Management needs to be raised to widen scope)
since the assignment and confirmation of resources for the
projects must be transparent. The basis for this approach is Introduction of standard PMO required
provided by the extended PMO services.
Technical skills of PMO staff to be trained
Having well-trained, certified Project Managers as well as a The reduction of the Project Management overhead (Vaughan,
high-maturity-level Project Management at its disposal will 2009) from the international benchmark of around 16% of the
help any enterprise succeed. But the greatest benefit an project budget down to 8% within large projects is another
organisation may profit from is a state-of-the-art PMO. reason to establish state-of-the-art PMOs within the organisation.
A PMO cannot replace a Project Manager, but PMOs can
The introduction of a PMO has a significant impact on a support project-oriented organisations at different levels and
project-management-based organisation or organisational units across project boundaries.
with either large or numerous projects, i.a. with regard to the
following: Introducing a state-of-the-art PMO requires specific know-how,
and this missing know-how is the main reason why PMOs have
Increase in maturity of Project Management
not yet been implemented on a large scale. As there is no
Increase in efficiency and effectiveness within projects common approach to learning or any training for such a high-
level PMO, allocating the required resources is a critical issue.
Reduction of redundant tasks and roles
But once this know-how is available it is an excellent business
Reduction of training effort opportunity with a considerable leverage factor.
9. Bibliographical References
SQS AG. Internal Report: Holistic Overview of IT Budgets of the 10 Largest Financial Companies. Cologne: 2011.
Vaughan, Jim. Project Management is NOT Overhead! CIO. [Online] 20/09/2009. [Cited: 2012.]
http://advice.cio.com/jim_vaughan/project_management_is_not_overhead.