Getting PMO done!

A Project Management Office (PMO) takes care of the overall management of a large programme, change portfolio and/or large projects. 

The PMO basics include governance (decision, escalation, budget, and overall steering and monitoring), planning and progress tracking, risks, issues, and dependency management. A PMO plays a challenging role in ensuring timely and high-quality delivery.

TOP’s senior project managers have a proven track record of managing complex change while ensuring timely and high-quality delivery. This is exceptional because most projects require time extensions or businesses must compromise on quality, scope, and/or delivery. Yes, this involves large projects with more than ten stakeholders (departments involved in business requirements, building (IT) solutions, acceptance testing, policy and regulations, 3 LOD/LORs, and so on).

The key control here is the emphasis on ensuring delivery! This sounds doable, but it is extremely difficult in practice, and many project managers and teams fail. In a world where Agile is adored by many IT teams, long-term project delivery planning cannot be committed because scaled agile or agile has not been properly implemented. This brings us back to Prince 2, where also scaled agile becomes too complex to manage. 

We have established a level of trust with our clients because they can rely on our project management operations. The PMO does not simply provide planning, a RAID log, or management of steering committees. It is about creating an environment in which people can collaborate extremely well and feel safe communicating, exchanging ideas, and working closely together in an open, non-political environment, with vision and strategy serving as the foundation for creating business value in the end.

In this article, we attempted to cover some fundamentals of how we see PMOs in organisations.

Have a TOP day!

Manisha