Maturing the Project Management Office

Find out about members' differing remits and challenges they are facing in the running of a PMO as well as the best practices which were agreed around reporting on benefits delivered and value provided.

Limited resources and ever-changing demands are some of the common challenges that programme and project management professionals complain of. Delegates attending this workshop were faced with the conundrum of selling themselves not just to IT, but to the wider business as well. How can you install confidence to your business customers that the information you are providing and the tools and analytics you are using are giving them the information they need?

Businesses now understand the requirement for a PMO but it is seen as an overhead. PMOs must be ready to sell the benefits to the business and identify where they can save money, time and duplicated effort.

The remit of the PMO was covered in detail during this full day workshop, identifying project sizing and prioritisation as well as broadening the scope to include business projects in addition to IT. Of particular interest to those present was the use of tools to monitor resource, scope, costs and produce reports. Many organisations use a mixture of SharePoint and Excel, however sophisticated tools tailored specifically for the PMO environment can streamline the role of the PMO and increase efficiency. The justification for the use of tools, as well as essential points to include in the business case, was included in this discussion.

This workshop was attended by 14 delegates representing 11 organisations from a wide cross-section of industries including county councils, construction, finance, leisure, mining, music, publishing and retail sectors.