What do the PMO do?

The Project Management Office is an organizational structure that standardizes the project–related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodology's, tools and techniques.  The idea is that the PMO support the Project Managers and Programme Managers and are an integral stakeholder and decision maker for the organisation's projects.

The primary function of the PMO is to support the projects in a number of ways, include Resourcing, Defining the Project Management Methodology, Monitoring Project Progress, Ensuring Project Compliance and help with Communication across Projects.  This is not a definitive list, but these are the highlights, as stated within the PMBoK guide.

I have worked in several companies with a PMO, but the most visible has been at my current client.  We currently have a PMO team with experienced personnel, who are able to guide and support the many Project Managers.  When I first started at this client, I was unsure of the support that they would offer and did not fully understand the vital role that the PMO can play.

When I started work for the client, I helped the PMO to redefine the Project methodology.  The methodology in place here is based on the Prince2 methods and practises, but has been modified to suit our environment.  The projects follow a strict process and the PMO are here to help the Project Managers follow the methodology and deliver our projects.  As the project methodology is based on Prince2, each project can tailor the process to suit the project requirements.

One of the key roles that is performed within the PMO is to determine the project and programme priorities.  They have full visibility of all of the projects and understand the business strategy and goals.  It is the role of the PMO to ensure that we deliver the right projects at the right time to ensure that the business strategy goals are reached.  The PMO will track the projects, track the budgets and track the risks to ensure that the projects are successfully delivered, ensuring the business benefits are realised.

The PMO will ensure the projects are resourced, from a Project Management point of view, to ensure the correct skills are in place to deliver a successful project with an appropriate Project Manager.

PMO usually report on all of the projects to the organisation's Senior Management.  They will take each project and be able to give an overall picture of all related and unrelated projects.  They will highlight the key successes and failures and issue reports to indicate who many projects are being worked on, delivered and if any have been stopped.  An important function of the PMO is to understand the business benefit of all of the projects and understand when to close projects early, if there is little business benefit or they do not align to the overall business strategy.

The PMO has much to offer a corporation and should be aligning the projects with the strategic direction of the business.  In addition, the PMO should improve the communication to the stakeholders and should improve the quality of all project deliverables.

What is in a Project Management Plan

A Project Management Plan (PMP) is an ever evolving document throughout life cycle of the project.  It lays the foundations of the project purpose, scope, structure and actions to complete the required product.  The PMP will start as a shell, containing high level information, but will be completed in more detail as the project progresses.  The estimates, risks, strategies and plans contained in the PMP will become more specific as the information becomes available to the Project Manager.

The PMBoK guide defines the PMP as " the process of documenting the actions necessary to define, prepare, integrate and coordinate all subsidiary plans.  The Project Management Plan defines how the project is executed, monitored and controlled, and closed".

Building The team

Building a team is one of the most important aspects of being a good of a Project Manager. When the project is under pressure to deliver, you have to rely on your team to put in the extra effort in a short amount of time, under constraints and under a close eye of your Project Board and Sponsor.

Just this week, I have had to deliver the Project Plan and budgets to the company PMO to gain authorisation to continue with the project.  I am at the end of the Planning phase and this means that the conceptual design, plan for the project, migration, strategy and operations, along with many other documents, have had to be delivered.  Most of these have been discussed in detail, but not put to paper, so I needed my team to deliver.

Project Initiation in a Japanese Corporation - Part 1

I am in the final week of the planning phase, within our Corporate Project Life-cycle   The life cycle is based on the Prince2 methodology, seeing as I wrote it soon after completing my Prince2 Practioner exam.  This is the time that the RACI matrix of the phase deliverables is being checked and the components are being completed.  There are many authorisations to seek and complete, of which each document could have between 1 and 6 signatures.  The final Project "bundle" of documents has a header sheet, where approximately 10-12 will eventually sign it off. 

I work for a Japanese Corporation, which follow a strict protocol in terms of project control and budgets.  It is actually quite a refreshing change to work for a company that expects you will spend a serious amount of time in the planning phases, proving your concepts and gaining sign-off from all parties concerned.  It means that each department and management level, understand your project, authorise your project and have buy-in to your deliverables.

The PM Golden Triangle

To all Project Manager, the Triple Constraint, or as I say - the Golden Triangle, is a key component to almost every meeting they attend.  People will push the boundaries at every opportunity they can take.  As the Project Manager it is vital to accept this and push back to the offender and explain the impact of the change to the project. 

The golden triangle covers the Time, Cost and Scope of the project , which all lead to the quality delivery of a project.  If you change one, you will affect the other two in one way or another. For example, if my technical analyst on the project changes the server architecture from Physical to Virtual, this could effect both the Price and the Time for installation.  If this component is on my critical path, then it could effect the time to completion, in either a positive or negative way.  The Price may increase or decrease and will impact the project budget in a positive or negative way.

3 years continual learning

Now that I am a PMP, I will continue to develop as a Project Manager and gain more knowledge, understanding and most importantly, experience. To maintain my PMP status, I must complete 60 PDUs (Professional Development Units) over the course of three years. There are two main categories of PDU, which are for Continued Education and Giving Back to the Profession.

What does PMP mean to me

Passing the PMP exam was a huge relief.  It was a difficult exam in terms of the amount of information you have to process within each question.  The PMBoK is fairly straight forward and even with the limited Project Management experience I have, I was able to apply each Input, Tool, Technique and Output to something that I had seen, or produced in the recent past.

Many people in the UK seem to take the Prince2 Certification, however, not many people have taken both the Prince2 and PMP.  When mentioning that I had passed the PMP exam to other Project Managers in the office, they seem to be quite impressed.  A Senior Project Manager colleague of mine in the US said "Wow! You passed THE BIG ONE!", when she heard that I had passed the exam.