The Fall of the Traditional PMOs

Although there is solid research supporting the need for PMOs, emphasizing their benefits in linking organizational strategy and project execution, most of real-world PMOs fail miserably in delivering value. That’s because these PMOs are created out of the blue without proper change management, usually based on half-backed recipes and standardized tools. In the absence of a common understanding on the PMO’s mission by senior management, organizations end up with a Frankenstein’s monster of processes and functions without tangible results.

By far, the biggest and most common mistake we observe when organizations try to implement a PMO is lack of project management knowledge, experience and maturity. Senior executives see PMOs as black-boxes to successfully (and magically) deliver project results. Lack of bottom line improvement and low increase in project success rates frustrate senior executives’ expectations. They don’t understand the role played by organizational structure and its impact on project management.

Failed PMO implementations frequently rely solely on project management processes and tools without paying attention to organizational fit. Connecting the dots between organizational strategy and project execution demands strong alignment and proper support.

In general, most organizations are upset by low PMO performance. Senior executives feel either burned by poor PMO implementations or trapped by black-box PMOs without clear indication of value added. Poor past experience with PMOs undermined credibility. Before implementing a PMO, answer these Frequently Avoided Questions.

Project practitioners have now the difficult task of reinventing PMOs and re-connecting them to the organizational strategy as PMOs have a trip back to prove their value in the eyes of skeptic business managers.

The key take-away here is that PMOs are now under serious scrutiny of executives and we expect to continue witnessing a decrease in PMOs, which leads us to a new trend in decentralizing and outsourcing project management.