What Is a Project Management Office?
A project management office is a department or group that defines and maintains the standards of process, generally related to project management, within the organization, according to Wikipedia. The PMO strives to introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects and is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution.
PMOs certainly are popular. The Center for Business Practices (CBP) recently sent out a survey to 435 of its Fortune 1000 members; 325 responded that they have a PMO.
Mike McKeon, SVP of Booz Allen Hamilton, says PMOs are very common on Wall Street, although he notes that they sometimes are called "program management offices." Among finance industry respondents to the CBP survey, 61.2 percent have an enterprisewide strategic project office.
According to the CBP, PMO budgets average $600,000 per year, which represents roughly 1.7 percent of their organizations' overall budget. The average PMO has eight people reporting to it, though PMOs that have existed for five years or more average 16.5 people.
McKeon says there are three types of PMO. "The first, surface-level, is a score-keeping PMO -- doing nothing more than monitoring and tracking all programs, taking care of status reporting," he says. "It's a limited role with no decision rights; it's weak-form PMO."
At the second level, a PMO is accountable for individual projects, identifying people to manage each project and acting as a manager rather than a scorekeeper, McKeon says. At the third level, the PMO is empowered with greater decision rights and even may be accountable for major business change, he adds.
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