The Project Management Office (PMO) industry is growing at an exceptional rate and is set to exceed $6.6 trillion by year 2020, according to PMI. What is the value of a PMO and is it worth a company’s investment? Changes in the marketplace have led to fast-paced development, competitive pressures intensifying and businesses going global. Companies have begun to recognize the benefits of structure and guidance that a PMO can provide.
PMOs give support, mentoring, standardization and best practices to businesses. Organizations using PMOs can improve efficiency of undertaken projects as well as alignment of projects with future business strategy. According to PMI, organizations that complete 80% or more of their projects on time and on budget, meet their original goals and business intent. By doing so these businesses are known as “champions” or elite organizations. Champion organizations understand the strategic importance of a Project Management Office and experience significant cost savings due to successful project performance.
According to Tonya Petrozzi, Involta’s Director of PMO, there are several reasons to implement a Project Management Office to assist with goals and projects and furthermore to become a “champion” organization. Here are seven:
- Create Consistency for Clients – company projects should have a set of standards on how they are delivered. Goals and delivery should be tracked along with setbacks.
- Align Executive Visibility – all eyes on deck helps to ensure completion and escalation if there are issues or challenges.
- Manage and Meet Budgets – ensure the scope statement and project plan is aligned to the budget, staying on track, can work to ensure productivity saves money.
- Prioritize Tasks – identify what is an emergency and what can wait, establishing timelines, understanding risks, assist with time management, creating and assigning tasks.
- Overcome Project Roadblocks – get ahead of the problem by identifying the “why”, connect the right individuals immediately, talk through the scope, continue movement of the project and align resources to solve the problem.
- Coordinate Resources – ensuring the right resources for solutioning, creating meetings, gather and compile data and insight for the project.
- Ensure Communication – the success of a project largely depends on the efficiency of its communication network. It starts working from day one of the venture and continues for the entire life span of the project. It provides regular updates to notify the status of the project as well as its performance capacity. It has been said that 90% of a project manager’s time is spent communicating what is going to be done.
Project management-run initiatives can save companies 28 times more money since the overall output is more reliable by meeting the budget, staying on schedule and meeting scope, and quality standards. (PMI, 2017)
About Tonya Petrozzi
Tonya Petrozzi is Involta’s Director of Project Management Operations. Prior to Involta, Petrozzi‘s background was very diverse including finance, managing boards, organizing national conferences, contract management for grants as well as writing grants and fundraising. Petrozzi graduated with a degree in Technology Management and has focused her work on writing RFPs, planning, coaching and implementing strategy sessions around IT.
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