White Paper – PMO structure and style
Aligning the PMO with stakeholder needs1 Interest and research on the role of the PMO has been. A common focus is to determine ‘What is the purpose of the PMO, what value should the investment in project support, deliver, and does it?’ In late 2008, a report commissioned by CA (2009) looked at the take-up of PMOs in Europe. It reported that the number of organisations investing in a PMO had risen in the past four years from 67% to 85% and that nearly 35% of the organisations had had some form of PMO for more than five years. What is also clear from this most recent work is that the functions covered by PMOs vary widely. Academic research in this area strongly supports the view of the great variety in the organisational context, form and function of the PMO. How PMOs add value is contextdependent, and therefore their structure and function should vary across and even within organisations. One ‘size’ does not fit all. Some of the most recent commentary on this goes further and criticises the attempts by various professional and commercial bodies to create a single maturity model for the PMO. They suggest that the political positioning of the PMO and the nature of the stakeholder demands are significant factors in dictating what type of PMO is likely to add most value to the organisation. Where the academic press differs from the professional press is in seeing PMOs as transient rather than permanent or long-term structures. Research by Hobbs (2008) found that over half the PMOs they researched were less than two years old. Those that had existed for longer were under continuous pressure to renew and update their services and rarely survived for longer than a few years in their original forms. 11
Abbreviated version of paper presented at the th Western Cape PMSA Conference, 18-19 November, 2009 www.projman.co.za
Page 1 of 2
Defining the PMO: The models
When defining the PMO, a crucial step is to identify who and precisely what the stakeholder groups want. When project performance becomes a senior management or Board issue it is either because there is concern about loss of control or ‘lack of visibility’ of project expenditure – a tactical matter often focusing on individual projects; or because of stress about prioritisation of projects and resources of departmental or enterprise portfolios and the need to create or drive value out of the investment in projects. Senior managers demanding information to support their decision-making is the ‘demand’ side’. Conversely the ‘supply side’ is the project managers, the people who provide status and other information about projects. Their interests may be parochial, they just need a hand to get the necessary paperwork done, or it may be more professional, they are interested in developing their own and the general capability in project management of the community of which they are a member. They want to ‘professionalise’ project management. Figure 1 Stakeholder interests
Strategic
Tactical
Selector
Team coach
Scorekeeper
Bag carrier
Demand
Supply
Clearly, these different stakeholders have different interests, and it is necessary to design the PMO that meets their disparate needs. To create an appropriate blueprint the model analyses out the two crucial dimensions: the control—support axis and the secure—improve axis. This gives rise to the four fundamental types of PMO
© Projman cc trading as picubed
White Paper – PMO structure and style
Figure 2 -PMO archetype
people competent in project management, but not necessarily by ex-project managers. They tend to be more reactive than ‘guidance’ PMOs and are ‘demand side’ driven. When you combine model 1 – the stakeholders’ level and type of interest with model 2 – type of PMO, it is possible to design a ‘fit-for-purpose’ PMO. Figure 3 - Stakeholder analysis Admin Control Demand Low High Low High High Supply High Low Low Low High PMO Low Low Med Low Low
Administration PMOs focus primarily on the collation of data, reporting on aggregated data and information handling. It supports individual projects and is mostly passive in operation, but can undertake asset-audit style reviews. These are typically staffed by administrators. Control PMOs focus on information management, being the preferred conduit for project status reporting to senior management. Often regarded as ‘objective; by senior management and ‘hostile’ by projects, they concern themselves with project variance reporting, can be interventionist, performing project audits. They usually have functional specialists included in the staff and they often have some authority assigned to them. Guidance PMOs are set up as centres for excellence and as change agents within the project community. They are staffed by process specialists, and are proactive in influencing project performance. They tend to provide or enable training and development of project managers as well as undertaking value-adding reviews of projects. This type of PMO sometimes owns pools of project managers for assignment to projects. Partnership PMOs are involved in establishing strategic direction by advising on the enterprise project portfolio. They are responsible for determining the ‘do-ability of candidate portfolios, they monitor portfolio performance and maintain a view on the project capability and capacity of the organisation. These PMOs are led by a senior manager, and are staffed by www.projman.co.za
Page 2 of 2
Guidance High Low High High Med Med
Partner High Interest High High Influence
Take into account the stakeholder interest levels and the level of influence (status and positioning of PMO manager role in the organisation) it is possible to identify the most appropriate form of PMO. The challenge for the PMO designer is to identify the primary drivers for the PMO and balance what are often competing agendas from the different stakeholder groups. One of the biggest problems for the designer is where the needs have not yet been clarified and instead the stakeholders are offered a menu of what can be done by the PMO. With this approach the most likely response is “let’s have a bit of everything”. Apart from the obvious problems this gives the PMO manager in managing priorities it is also the case that the style of the PMO dictates the support functions offered and the capability and resourcing required. But the real showstopper is the political positioning of the PMO. Expecting the PMO to provide enterprise wide portfolio decision making support to the board and then hiding it away as a sub-function within a department (such as IT), is unlikely to be successful. If you would like to see the full version of this paper and/or would like to use the Projman PMO profiling tool to diagnose your PMO, contact us at info.projman.co.za
© Projman cc trading as picubed