PMO 2007 - research into Best Practices

Are you the manager of a:

• Programme Office?
• Project Office?
• Project Support Office (PSO)?
• Programme Management Office (PMO)?
• Project Assurance Office (PAO)?
• Centre of Excellence (COE) for Project and Programme Management?

Or perhaps something similar to the above, but with a different label?
Or perhaps you manage a Projects Group or pool of Project Managers and are thinking of setting up a PMO?

If so, we are looking for people like you to participate in a research paper into Project/Programme Offices.

There are numerous methods for managing projects and programmes that are well documented and in use (the defacto ones being PRINCE2 and MSP), but there are very few 'methods' for establishing and operating a PMO.  Yet recent reports, such as the NAO report into Successful IT-enabled Change indicates a correlation between the presence of a PMO and successful projects/programmes.  In deed, most maturity models imply the need for a PMO at level 3 maturity and demand their presence for Level 4 maturity.

It is not surprising then that when people are appointed to set up and manage a PMO, they may find themselves asking:

• What's the typical remit of a PMO?
• What are the range of remits (setting standards, facilitating, training, monitoring, administration, compliance, etc)?
• How big/small should it be?
• What sort of skills are required?
• What tools can help?
• Should it be responsible for governance? If so, how?
• What do other PMO managers worry about? What improvements are other PMO managers planning?
• What is the value of a PMO? How can we measure whether a PMO is providing value?
• Am I doing the right thing?

These are some of the questions covered by a study being undertaken by David Milnes and his research team in Q2/Q3 2007.  Outperform are one a number of sponsors assisting with the study - into an area of Project and Programme management that is becoming increasingly mportant for organisations to get the most from their PPM investments - which we hope will become an annual survey.

If you manage such 'offices' then we would welcome your input to the study.  All participants will gain early access to the research findings which will be avaulable in Winter 2007 (and available to purchase in 2008).  If you would like to participate in the study, please register your details in the contact form on the left.

Many thanks.