Project Management Offices (PMOs) have become a hot topic within APQC, as well as in the Business Excellence arena. In fact, PM Solutions just came out with their State of the PMO Office for 2014 survey report, which found that high performing companies have more capable PMOs. In their findings, PMOs are going to have to be more strategic in their thinking as they support an ever changing business. Highly capable PMOs drive continuous improvement processes across the enterprise. At the other end of the spectrum are lower level PMOs that provide and drive basic project management.
Common Challenges PMOs Are Facing
1. Organizational Resistance (see APQC’s study on overcoming organizational resistance )
2. PMO seen as an overhead cost
3. Time and resource constraints
4. Demonstrating the value of the PMO
5. Poor resource management capability
PMOs need to provide additional value and one way truly effective PMOs do that is by providing strategic support; like coordinating and governing the implementation process.
Baker Hughes and UL use PMOs for Successful Change Management
This concept is further supported by APQC’s recently completed Transformation Change Making it Last study. The PMO was key in centrally managing the change while allowing for decentralized implementation across the organization. Two of our best-practice organizations used this concept in drastically changing their business.
1. Baker Hughes – used centralized governance and PMOs to drive to consolidate culture and systems across a very distributed business
2. UL –used enterprise PMOs (ePMOs) to manage its organizational transformation from a reactive non-profit organization to a for profit business driving safety innovations in new industries
With all this focus on PMOs APQC will be looking to our membership to find out, where would you like APQC to focus their next PMO research project.