Building and running a project management office (PMO) isn’t easy. Even the most organized and experienced planners find themselves managing a project that ends up in chaos, resulting in budget overruns and missed deadlines. Organizations still struggle to execute projects successfully. Fortunately, every problem has a solution. In this article at the PM World 360, Jan Schiller discusses some of the PMO’s worst practices and advises on how to avoid the pitfalls.
Pitfalls of PMO and Ways to Avoid
Not Having Clear Goals and Objectives for the PMO
Ensure the goals and objectives for the PMO is established and understood by all. You can create a coherent plan only when everyone knows what to aim for. Further, goals and objectives help in gauging the effectiveness of the processes introduced to the project teams.
Implementing PMO Without a Framework
Many project managers try to implement PMO across the organization. However, PMO can be great for some software development teams but can turn out to be entirely inappropriate for process improvement teams. To avoid this pitfall, ensure your PMO tool supports project-type hierarchies and type-specific templates to help your teams manage and streamline requests and execute projects efficiently.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Massive projects will be risky and complicated, and project managers must manage them accordingly. To handle such projects, you will require a PMO that will enable the sharing of tools, methodologies, resources, and techniques for project success across the enterprise. But, how many of your projects are of that magnitude? Most new projects are modest in scope. Do the same protocols and forms apply across all projects, irrespective of project size? No.
Gathering Unnecessary Information from PMO
PMO helps you gather all sorts of statistics. However, if you aren’t using the collected information in the decision-making process, then why gather it? It is just an extra burden on the project team without generating any useful results.
These are the critical pitfalls that you must avoid while implanting and running a PMO. To read the full article, click on https://www.pmworld360.com/blog/2020/05/19/avoiding-common-pmo-pitfalls/.
