Why PMO is More Important than You Think

What is a PMO?

A project management office (PMO) is, essentially, any group or a specific department within any organization, business entity, or government agency. The primary function of a PMO is to define and maintain project management standards within organizations.

Over time, the functions of a PMO has much evolved. What actually many project managers don’t realize is how a PMO with a value stream leadership strategy would impact the whole process of project management.

The roles and responsibilities of a PMO are to ensure project success, capacity, and capability optimization through governance, risk management, quality control, financial management, resource management, and schedule management.

Management vs Leadership

The most critical aspects of project management are cost, schedule, and resources. The effective supervision of these factors is key, but they aren’t enough to ensure success.

Project managers do need non-technical skills to run the whole process smoothly. Also, they need to masters areas such as emotional intelligence, leadership, and change management to guarantee project successes.

The two faces of leadership are to manage both the task and the relationship. Thus, a leader must have experience as a project manager to understand the nitty-gritty details of the technical elements.

The task-orient leaders will lead their team through the mechanics of the project including timely completion without crossing the budget limits.

The relationship managers seek to bring harmony within the team. They also communicate and create consensus with external stakeholders such as the executive committee, and project sponsors.

A true leader knows where and when to sell, say, or motivate. He leads his team motivating at the early stages to the completion of the project.

More Focus on Creating Business Value

Alongside results, delivering values to customers is now becoming more and more important than ever. PRINCE2 emphasizes more on business value than dividing the project into controllable stages.

The efficient use of contemporary communication channels such as WhatsApp and Trello is become inevitable for faster results without compromising value proposition. For agile delivery, contracts need to be drafted differently.

Client participation, in the entire project, should be a key part of the contract to flexibly meet the requirements of agile delivery.

Conclusion

In nutshell, the core purpose of the project management office (PMO) is to optimize capacity and capability through a value stream leadership strategy. The process involves the management of finance, risks, issues, resources, schedule to quality control, and governance.

True leaders have mastery over technical as well as management skills. Besides overseeing his team, a leader coordinates with all the stakeholders involved to produce the desired results without alienating the customers.

The PMO functions have changed over time. Initially, it was restricted to agricultural governance. A PMO, today, is a dynamic entity that can resolve any conflict and solve an issue lying at the heart of any organization or enterprise.