PMO overview
The Programme Management Office (PMO) supports the Programme by tracking its constituent projects and providing summary and exception reporting on their progress; both internally and to the client.
The PMO is responsible for:
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identifying and coordinating management of major cross-project inter-dependencies, milestones and risks
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implementing, and ensuring adherence to, an agreed set of programme and project management processes
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providing training and guidance to project managers in required techniques and processes.
PMO Principles
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Establishes and deploys a common set of project management processes and templates, which saves each project manager from having to create these on its own. These reusable project management components help projects start up more quickly and with less effort.
Builds the methodology and updates it to account for improvements and best practices. For example, as new or revised processes and templates are made available, the PMO deploys them consistently to the organisation.
Facilitates improved project team communications by having common processes, deliverables, and terminology. Less misunderstanding and confusion occurs within the organisation if everyone uses the same language and terminology for project-related work.
Provides training to build core project management competencies and a common set of experiences.
Delivers project management coaching services to keep projects from getting into trouble. Projects at risk can also be coached to ensure they don’t worsen.
Tracks basic information on the current status of all projects in the organisation and provides project visibility to management in a common and consistent manner.
Tracks the state of project management, project delivery, and the value being provided to the business. The PMO also assesses the general project delivery environment on an ongoing basis to determine the improvements that have been made.
Specific Responsibilities of a PMO
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Operates as a Centre of Excellence for Project and Programme Management – a central pool of skilled resources
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Acts as a catalyst for delivery excellence
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An ‘information hub’ that proactively creates dialogue across all work areas
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Tracks and reports progress against the programme plan
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Tracks risks and issues in conjunction with the Project Manager
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Maintains control of programme documentation and information management
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Manages the change control process, registers proposed changes and tracks progress
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Establishes consistent quality practices and standards
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Coordinates internal and external communications across the programme on delivery progress, programme events etc
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Monitors spend against budget
Information Management
Communication Internally & External
Agree Communication framework
Advice, guidance, hands on help
Develop working relationships
Structured Reporting
Administration
Develop a Centre of Excellence
Information hub
Maintains control of documentation
Reporting status
Configuration Library
Change Management
Single Point of Contact for Change control activities
Resource Management
Project Pipeline
Resource requirements
Programme Planning
Define cross project dependencies
Maintain high-level programme plan
Tracking dependencies & Milestones
Critical Path analysis
Risk Management
Single Point of Contact
Central Co-ordination
Develop & Maintain RAID Logs
Ensure Risks are owned and reviewed
Quality Management
Agree Quality Standards
Adheres to Project standards
Review Project output
Finance
Budget reviews
Cost tracking