A project management office (PMO) is a strategic component of an organization trying to improve its ability to deliver projects that bring value to the organization. Historically, the process of starting a formal PMO has been assigned to different entities, depending on the scope of the office. However, it is always a challenge to start from scratch (PMI.org)
There is no definitive source of truth or a universal accepted classification model for different kinds of PMO. Classification is important because project management practitioners typically turn to best (or accepted) practices when faced with the challenge to explore a new task that requires more information than the one they possess from their own practices.
The first model comes from a Project Management Institute study on PMOs. This study outlines the following classification for PMOs (PMI, 2013, p. 6):
- Organizational PMO: Provides project-related services to support a business unit
- Project support services: Provides enabling processes to continuously support management of project, program, or portfolio work
- Enterprise PMO: Highest level PMO, typically responsible to align project and program work to strategy
- Center of Excellence: Supports project work by providing the organization with standards, methodologies, and tools
- Project Specific PMO: Provides project related temporary services as an entity to support a specific project or program
Secondly, the A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) also provides a basic description and classification of PMOs :
- Supportive: Provides a consultative role to projects by supplying templates, best practices, training, access to information and lessons learned from previous projects
- Controlling: Provides support and requires compliance through various means
- Directive: Takes control of the projects by directly executing them
In general, most PMOs act as the backbone of a successful project management approach in any organization. They offer support and information. Most provide the following services to their organizations and projects.
- Governance: They make sure that the right decisions are being made by the right people based on the right information. This can also include auditing and peer reviews, developing project structure and making sure there’s accountability.
- Transparency: They provide information that is relevant and accurate to support effective decision-making.
- Reusability: There’s no reason to “reinvent the wheel,” so they are a depository of learned lessons, offering templatesand best practices from previous successful projects.
- Delivery Support: They facilitate project teams and help them do their jobs more effectively by streamlining process and bureaucracy, offering training, mentoring and quality assurance.
- Traceability: They manage documentation, project history and organizational knowledge.
