A PMO is more than just a department with a bunch of excel spreadsheets. It’s an essential part of any organization and company that takes its processes seriously.
And if you’re reading this, we can assume that you take your processes at the company — including the project management processes – very seriously. That being said, the PMO requires structure, visibility, and accountability to be effective. Unfortunately, most PMOs are fragmented and unorganized.
Fortunately, there are several features available in PSA software that empowers the PMO and helps it become more organized. A well-equipped PMO is also going to be much easier to operate every day as well as audit when necessary or required. Let’s get started…
Define your process and culture
The first step to empowering your PMO is to define your organization’s process and culture. A key ingredient in this is to define what success looks like.
That is – what is the desired result that the PMO is trying to achieve? As a PMO, you’re responsible for facilitating the project management process for the organization.
You’re also responsible for producing accurate data, reports, and analytics that inform the business of the project health.
That’s a lot of responsibility. With that in mind, it’s important to define your process. It’s also essential to define your culture. Let’s take a look at each…
Build visibility and accountability
After you’ve defined your process and culture, the next step is to build visibility and accountability. Remember, the PMO is responsible for organizing, storing, and analysing all pertinent data related to the project management process.
This means that there has to be a way to ensure visibility and accountability. Many organizations use software to manage their projects, programs, and portfolios. This software is often referred to as a project or Professional Services Automation (PSA) software.
You want to be able to show that projects are compliant with the process, that people are accountable for their activities, and that there is transparency and traceability of data. What does this look like? Let’s say that you’re managing a project to launch a new product or service.
You’ve defined your process, you’re managing that process in your PSA software, and you’re tracking and managing the data.
You want to make sure that everyone is aware of the project scope and timeline. You also want to make sure that people are aware of their responsibilities and have full visibility of the project and their role in it.
Manage risk and quality
Let’s say that you’ve successfully implemented your process. You’ve built visibility and accountability. You’re also successfully managing risk and quality.
The last thing that you want to do is to optimize your PMO to make it more efficient and effective. These are the areas that you need to focus on: – Data quality – How accurate are the data and reports? – Process efficiency – How quickly are you producing and consuming data? – Process effectiveness – How effective is the process?
Conclusion
Now that we’ve explored how to empower the PMO, it’s important to note that empowering the PMO and PMOs, in general, is crucial to the success of any organization and company.
It’s also important to remember that PSA software can help you reach that goal. PSA software is powerful and can support the efforts of the PMO by facilitating the project management process and helping to organize and manage data.
