Reflection on “PMOs Under Pressure, by Voices: Peer to Peer, April 2012”

The article “PMOs Under Pressure” discussed the challenges that the PMOs face, and in many cases limit their lifespan, which is unfortunately very short according to the article; two years on average. The article suggests effective ways and important things to consider before implementing the PMO in a particular origination.

Before implementing the PMO, the organization should make sure that the benefits outweigh the cost of running the PMO, especially that many firms are going through budget reductions, because of the increased pressure coming from business executives who aim to lowering costs, and increasing the speed of responsiveness in the same time, and that can be very challenging, so it is crucial for PMOs that want to survive this tough business environment to relate their philosophy to the overall business strategy, for example, if the PMO is in an firm where value is measured in profits and bottom line, the PMO needs to justify itself in that particular measure to win the top management support, because in that way projects will be viewed as effective tools used to execute strategy, and maximize the firm’s value.

When it comes to the basic requirements, the PMOs should have the answer of the following set of questions; are they doing the right projects? are they doing them the right way? are they doing them well? are they delivering the outcome? and if they are able to measure all that, they will know how good they are doing.

Some of the lesson learned from this article is that winning the executive support is considered to be the biggest challenge, that is why PM offices must match the organizational and business needs, and that will demonstrate how the office will help executing the strategy and achieving goals. So to get their support and sponsorship, the PMO should speak the executives’ language, and it should place itself closer to the executive level.

From my own experience, the business world is becoming strongly a value-oriented market place, and that is why PMO need to prove themselves to the top management to get that support and extend its lifespan. Additionally, the success of non-value added projects is also considered to be a failure, because it is a waste of the firm’s resources. I also find that the PMOs facing problems with benefits realization which leads to problems in project prioritization.

Another issue I also found is that in the demands planning and resource management; all that is adding more pressure on the PMOs. The PMO should focus on the overall value added projects instead of the number of the projects completed. Finally, I believe that PMO should treat the top management as a customer, and as we all know, if the customer does not appreciate and value your work (or you project outcomes), you should not be doing that project in the first place.