What are the roles and responsibilities of the project management office (PMO) in the organization?
What are the roles and responsibilities of the project management office (PMO) in the organization? A project management office (PMO) is a group in a business that is responsible for preparing management reports and establishing guidelines and a governance framework.
But in the past few years, the project management office has evolved and is no longer limited to administrative functions. The modern project management office can potentially become a value center and a vital part of business profitability.
According to Statista, 80% of organizations have one or more project management offices.
This article will help you understand the broad responsibilities of a value-based project management office and the basic tools necessary to implement them.
The main responsibilities of the project management office
A value-driven project management office can play a wide variety of roles in modern business. This can be very useful for a project-based company.
Some of the duties and responsibilities of the project management office include the following:
Creating a project governance structure
The Project Management Office develops a project governance framework to provide a structured approach to managing projects. It includes various stakeholders such as team members, project managers, project sponsors, investors, customers, etc. The purpose of the governance structure is to ensure the following:
- Projects are aligned with short-term and long-term business goals and are prioritized.
- The right people have access to the information they need to make the right decisions.
- Projects remain within the planned time and budget.
- Organizational resources are used in the most efficient way.
- Risk assessment and mitigation is an ongoing process in all projects.
Providing management reports
One of the main responsibilities of the project management office is to centralize information and deliver it to the appropriate stakeholders. This ensures that management makes informed and timely decisions for the success of the project. Below are some examples of management reporting:
- Overall progress and health of projects
- Status of milestones and deliverables across the portfolio
- Financial information about budget, forecast, actual, margin, etc
- Project risks and progress in reducing them
- Operational efficiency and project performance
- Management and effective use of organizational resources
Prioritizing projects based on strategic business goals
Setting operational and strategic goals is an important part of future business planning. They are the key to short and long-term business success. These goals are achieved with the help of various programs and portfolios consisting of projects. The project management office plays an essential role in this process and has the following responsibilities:
- Ensure programs and portfolios are aligned with operational and strategic goals.
- Projects are selected and prioritized based on these business objectives.
- Organizational resources are allocated and used according to business objectives.
- Designing and tracking various key performance indicators (KPI) of the program and performance of portfolios
Plan resources effectively
Resource planning is one of the most important responsibilities of a successful project management office. This process ensures that the right resources are allocated to the right project at the right time. Some highlights of efficient resource planning include:
- Eliminate spreadsheet silos with a single source application
- Creating visibility of capacity, competence, and availability of resources for all stakeholders
- Real-time resource planning to accommodate continuous change
- Track all types of work, i.e. project work, non-project work, holidays, etc
- Creating multidimensional visualization and overcoming the challenges of matrix structure
Resource capacity forecasting and planning
In a dynamically changing business environment, forecasting and achieving real-time foresight for project resourcing is critical to the project management office. So that the project management office can take corrective actions ahead of schedule.
Some examples of resource forecasting are:
- Capacity to forecast versus demand to identify resource shortages or surpluses
- Anticipate alternates and project gaps to minimize resource wastage
- Forecasting financial resources of resource management to determine margins and profitability
Simplifying and automating processes and workflows
As an integral part of performance improvement, Project Management Office simplifies various project management processes and methods. for example:
- Creating application, selection, and project prioritization procedures
- Simplify the workflow for requesting and allocating resources
- Gather up-to-date information about employee skills, interests, and experience
- It predicts and provides early warnings before it is too late
Reuse project learning and knowledge
A project management office enables team efficiency by facilitating the transfer of knowledge between administrative project teams. It makes project plans, reviews, templates, and documents widely available to stakeholders, saving time and money that would otherwise be incurred. Instead of repeating these costs, project teams can not only shorten their learning curve but also get more done through shared organizational knowledge.
Maximizing the use of strategic and payable resources
A mature project management office provides support and coaching to project managers. After all, they are at the heart of the project lifecycle.
Developing project manager competencies increase his ability to lead and manage project execution and team dynamics.
In addition, it equips them to gauge their team’s strengths and prevent conflicts between members.
In this way, projects can tap into potential by using employees who can use their key skills and knowledge to perform tasks and help each other.
Training and coaching of project managers
For a project-based company, it is very important that employees are working on a billable project or a strategic project. Therefore, it is very important for a project management office to strive for maximum utilization of paid and strategic employees. To achieve this goal, a project management office constantly anticipates the use of resources and directs them to strategic and cost-effective projects.
Conclusion
The success of the project management office depends on appointing the right person to promote it. Sometimes they have to ask for unusual changes, so the only way for them to succeed is to have management support and clearly defined responsibilities and competencies.
Then the culture in the organization has an impact and it will probably take time for the project management office to settle comfortably in the center. For this transition to be successful, there must be transparency in the project environment. So, how you implement transparency into your company culture will either help or hinder you.
But after establishing the project management office and starting to benefit from the projects, you will find it as an integral part of the organization. This helps drive success and allows project managers, who may not always see the whole picture, to do better for the company and their teams.
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