Building and Running a New PMO
Starting a Project Management Office (PMO) is not for the faint of heart. It involves blood, sweat and sometimes tears in the form of change management — which can strike fear into the hearts of many. Fortunately, there are some tried and true tricks that can enable new PMOs drive value for your business and at the center of it all is understanding what’s in it for your stakeholders. Specifically, what do people have to gain by having a PMO in their company or department? How will you ensure the PMO is delivering the expected value? I teamed up with Michael Yoder (Senior Product Manager at RetailMeNot) to share a few tips at the Kickass PM meetup on June 20 in Austin. Here we recap our tips to get your PMO off the ground and keep it healthy.
Decide how you will approve and run projects
Just about any effort can be considered a project, from launching a new software product to moving an office from one place to another. It’s important to create clarity around what types of projects your PMO will manage, and what processes or operating cadence is needed to identify, run, measure and close the highest value projects for your team. Process can be a scary word, especially in the high tech world where speed and agility are core values, but when it leads to better communication and visibility across teams you’ll quickly get the buy-in you need to build a thriving PMO for the company to rally around. It’s also critical to have a standard methodology for running your projects, for example are you a waterfall, Agile, Kanban? Choosing a standard approach ensures consistency in predicting delivery dates and makes it easier to track progress and performance.
Create visibility through reporting
Project managers are the lucky ones who get to see performance stats across multiple teams and projects, so they’re well suited to create digestible status and progress reports on important initiatives. It’s invaluable to have a project manager on your team to ensure projects get done and everyone is informed along the way. A portfolio or program manager can aggregate status data across teams and share it broadly to get a clear picture of how you are progressing on your key initiatives and where improvements may be needed, which can then feed back into your operating cadence.
Have traditional project management skills
Project management skills are essential for a PMO. Project managers should be tactical, organized, have attention to detail and ability to understand all sides of stakeholder needs, but they should also have traditional project management knowledge that aligns to the methodology you have chosen for your department or company. There are plenty of certifications and training programs that teach traditional project management, such as PMI’s Project Management Professional (PMP) and Agile Certified Practitioner (ACP). Individuals with the right characteristics and training might just be your next project management superstars.
Have high standards
Your project managers should be the most organized and dependable people on the team. Remember, you’re relying on them to be the hub of initiatives your department or company cares about the most. Trust is an essential element in every successful project team, and project managers who are responsive, timely and prepared with high quality work set the standard for building that trust.
Summary
It’s not uncommon to hear the question “what exactly does a PMO do?” It’s not always obvious because project managers serve as the hidden glue holding everything together. Great PMOs help build bridges when communication is lacking and bring order to chaos when you’re constantly fighting fires. If you’re just getting your PMO started, keep in mind what your organization has to gain and make that central to your charter. If you’re unsure if you need one, focus on how well you think teams communicate and work together in an organized way to deliver important initiatives. Perhaps a PMO is all that’s needed to take your organization from good to kickass.
