Why PMO offices fail — and 7 ways to help your PMO succeed

How different the fates of so many project management offices (PMOs) might have been if only the term of art were “project success office” or “project value-delivery office.”

But PMO it is, a name that sounds both transactional and narrowly focused on coordinating a single project.

Whether or not nomenclature plays the villain, the underperformance and outright failures of PMOs often rest on a too-narrow interpretation of the PMO’s role. That role, ideally, should be as a center of expertise with an array of tools, people and processes to support an organization’s overall strategy and value delivery through the prioritization and management of a diverse project portfolio. Unfortunately, that ideal is rarely realized due to the three main reasons why PMOs fail.

1. The PMO is set up as a transactional/tactical entity — not as a strategic center

I’ve seen too many organizations whose PMOs are viewed as toolsheds rather than full-service strategic resources. The leaders of a given project turn to the PMO for transactional needs such as status reporting or project-management plan templates, but they don’t see the PMO as a resource to help guide best practices in executing programs of work — much less to impress upon a project’s leaders a broader sense of a project’s risks, its implications, its downstream dependencies and its impact on the overall organization.

Worse, organizations that underuse PMOs fail to harness the PMO as a clearinghouse for understanding how the company’s or business unit’s portfolio of projects is aligned to value as defined by organizational KPIs.

2. The PMO’s staff has insufficient business expertise

This is a particular issue with enterprise PMOs (EPMOs), but it can impact PMOs across the board. A PMO or EPMO needs a cohort of staff that understands the needs, goals and processes of the lines of business the PMO serves. That lets PMO experts assess how a given project’s goals align with those of the business, and it can also help them consult on the relative priority of different projects and proposed efforts.

The greater risk of insufficient business expertise among PMO staff is that the business loses confidence in the PMO and starts working around it. That not only introduces inefficiencies at the project level, but also blinds leadership as to the relative progress of the various projects underway.

3. The PMO lacks the governance and leadership buy-in it needs to succeed

Without the business’s leaders’ concerted, ongoing effort to support the PMO as a strategic asset aligned with the organization’s key metrics, the PMO risks devolving into toolshed status. Leadership support includes staffing the PMO with the experience it needs to engage strategically and build trust in the broader organization.

7 ways to help your PMO succeed

With the failure modes established, let’s look at seven things you can do to avoid those pitfalls and develop and sustain PMOs that drive value.

1. Establish your goals for the PMO

The overarching goal should be to reshape the PMO into an organizational value driver and window into the overall project portfolio’s progress toward stated timing and business goals.

2. Assess the maturity of the PMO

Organizations must understand how far along they are in implementing and supporting a PMO that achieves those goals. Maturity models for PMOs abound, and experienced staff or consultants can help you use one to understand where your PMO stands, where you want it to be and how to bridge the gap between the two. Instilling a focus on business value and establishing or reconfirming leadership support and governance are critical in getting from A to B.

3. Position the PMO as a strategic pillar

Your organization must view the PMO as a strategic asset rather than a tactical distributor of tools and ad-hoc advice. Among other litmus tests: Does the PMO have a say in the prioritization of projects based on its own assessment of the project’s alignment with organizational strategy and the KPIs associated with attaining strategic goals? Does the PMO have the authority to say “no” to projects that don’t appear to add value? Does the PMO have a direct line to leadership to discuss the relative value of projects — and does the PMO’s assessment carry weight in executive decision-making?

4. Support a change of mindset in the PMO and in the business

A successful PMO helps project leaders deal with the people aspects of the organizational changes that projects introduce. That requires a service-oriented culture within the PMO, one that recognizes that, in addition to project management and business expertise, change-management skills are indispensable to delivering on a project’s promise.

5. Ensure that the PMO has the right staff

If your PMO is viewed as a mere dispenser of project-coordination tools, there’s a strong incentive to staff it with junior people with project-management certifications but little business knowledge and limited perspective. An effective PMO needs seasoned experts who can keep tabs on a portfolio of projects and spot red flags early — and, crucially, have the gravitas to articulate a project or proposed project’s relative risks, business value and status with business leadership.

6. Build flexibility into the PMO’s solution sets

The PMO should strike a balance between cross-project standardization along best practices that can drive efficiency and project-specific flexibility that a particular initiative may need to best proceed. If the PMO forces tools that don’t fit, projects skirt or subvert those tools — and, with that, dilute PMO’s positive influence on the project and its ability to report the overall project portfolio’s status to leadership.

7. Consider expanding the PMO’s mandate

Once a PMO is operating as an empowered, strategic entity, consider extending its purview. One client recently did so by bringing its business process improvement shared service into the PMO fold.

The term “PMO” is here to stay. But by recognizing why PMOs fail and taking key steps to achieve their promise, a PMO can far exceed the limits of its name, and to the great benefit of the organization it serves.

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