White Paper: Value Proposition for a Project Management Office (PMO)

The goal of the PMO is to execute high quality projects faster and at lower cost by implementing common methods, practices and processes across the entire organization. These common methods include templates, defined/tested processes, and best practices.

Some common responsibilities of a PMO include:

1. Develop/support/deploy defined project management processes and project management templates. These reusable objects support faster start-up of projects and ensure consistent tracking and reporting: good processes are repeated, ineffective processes are abandoned.

2. Continuous project management practice improvement: as best practices are identified/defined and/or improvements to processes/templates are identified, revisions are made to the methodology and deployed across the PMO organization.

3. Supports improved communication: the project teams use the same processes, deliverables, and language, leading to less confusion and fewer misunderstandings related to project work.

4. Documents services provided by the organization and services provided by all team members throughout project initiation, planning, execution, control and closeout.

5. Improved risk analysis, risk management and problem resolution: consistent methods, including risk management and status reporting, position the PMO to intervene early when corrections will have the lowest impact on project schedule, cost and quality.

6. Provides coaching to project managers to avoid problems on projects, intervention on projects when risk has been identified.

7. Manage and explain the change control process/procedures.

8. Track and report progress: deliver consistent tracking and status information for all projects in the organization, delivering project visibility to management in a