Where is your PMO?

In the current climate of change management, in many businesses, one element seems to have been lost. We're talking about the PMO - whether at a portfolio, programme or project level.

Businesses are refocusing their budgets on programmes that add future value, whether this is part of a company's increased need to be efficient or a result of an M&A event affecting all or some of the company. These event-driven business and technology programmes will need to initiate quickly to realise the benefits, whilst the "nice to haves" are being held back for now.

Assessing the original scope of business and technology-driven programmes, realigning to a new strategic direction as a result of COVID disruption, the PMO in many cases is nowhere to be seen. The reality of delivering on the new scope, against time and budget, with appropriate resource, hinges on a functioning PMO established at the outset.

"Often the PMO is brought in to establish governance and controls at a time when the project has already established itself, leading to avoidable risks."

The lack of control and governance at this early stage leads to missed dependencies or perhaps missed efficiency opportunities in delivery. The forward planning of complex programmes requires careful management of stakeholders, technology and resource. Any lack of forward planning and control leads to a bumpy path to delivery often with additional expenses that are then seen as necessary to then get the programme or project back on track.

There are many excellent technology tools available to support the PMO, and the selection itself can create challenges, but ultimately the function needs to follow a framework that manages these risks in a balanced approach in order to deliver the desired benefits.

Talk to us at ECMS on how we can deploy a structured and efficient PMO function, with a framework to support.​ Get in touch on mark.weller@ecmanagedsolutions.com.