Program Management Office - What you should know?

What is PMO (Program Management Office)?

According to Project Management Institute (PMI) , a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually. PMO helps to coordinate these efforts with defined standards

Surprisingly most of the businesses doesn't understand the importantce of PMO and how it help businesses to grow. In a simple terms, PMO tracks the project progress and maps to the organizational goals.

Project Vs Program Management
The general process and terminology at program level is similar to the project level. However, the program management processes address issues at a higher level and involves less detailed project-level analysis.

Like project management processes, the program management processes require coordination with other functional groups in the organization as well as stakeholder management in general-but in broader context.


Types of PMO (Project Management Office)

Supportive PMO: It's common type of PMO exist in most organizations. The prupose of this PMO is to provide necessery support to project teams through audits, reviews, standard templates, coaching, mentoring, stakeholder management, administration and any other necessery support activities as required.
Controlling PMO: It provides all the support described in Support PMO structure in addtion it is also responsible for enforcing standards, audits, processes, risk, and governance
Directive PMO: This is not a common structure in many organizations but it's very effective in a project certric organizations. In project centric organization, every initiative will have a standardized project structure with defined goals and budget to manage and control the initiatives. In this type of organization, the PMO owns the project delivery includes stakeholder management, managing teams, controlling the risk and outcomes, and any other related tasks.

Selling PMO concept, especially in IT Services Industry
Traditionally PMO was looked at it as an organizational overhead which steers the policies and procedures largely useless. It's changing especially in the project based IT services industry, the project based engagements.
The following are the key decision points to discuss with your management to get buy-in
> Control project costs by standardizing the project resources
> Reduce the project run-overs by better managing the risks
> Better managed stakeholder expectations
> Leveraging the sucess across other projects in the organization
> Focused approach eliminates expensive mistakes like loosing a customer etc.

Phases of PMO life cycle
1. Initiate a program
2. Planning a program
3. Execute the program
4. Monitoring & Control the program
5. Improve PMO

Qualifications for a Program Manager
1. Ability to map project outcomes to organizational goals
2. Strong leadership skills to manage teams, stakeholders, and other external agencies
3. Should possess outstanding negotiation skills
4. Strong Verbal and Oral communications skills
5. Business know-how
6. Ability to manage all risks with stable focus on the outcome
7. Quick learner, problem solver, risk owner, and flexible
8. Champion of business and people
9. Minimum of a Bachelors degree's in any discipline, a MBA or formal training in PM is required

References:
1. Project Management Institute - Standards for Program Management
2. The Program Management Office - Craig J. Letavec

more to come.....

Happy Learning

Sameer Penakalapati
sameer.penakalapati@gmail.com