If you have been following this blog you will recognize a common theme in almost everything you want to do: Know your outcomes (aka “Business Objectives”). Before establishing a PMO, you need to understand the PMO Sponsor’s vision of what problems they are trying to solve and/or what opportunities they wish to exploit.

Here are some possible problems your business may face that can be mitigated by having a PMO. You may have one or more of these to solve:

• We aren’t maximizing our Return On Investment (ROI) from our portfolio of projects.
• Our project mix is not aligned with our long and short term business goals
• We don’t have control of our project request process
• We have key resources frequently overloaded causing project bottlenecks and delays
• Our projects are usually late
• Our projects are usually over budget
• We under-deliver on the agreed upon scope
• Our projects often have the scope expanded without knowledge or approval
• Our project quality is frequently lacking
• We take on too much risk
• We don’t take on enough risk

Depending on the problems you wish to solve, here is just a sample of the measurable business outcomes you can obtain my investing in a PMO:

• Regular financial analysis reviews showing the ROI on the current active project portfolio and the ROI on alternative combinations of projects
• No resource bottlenecks; Resources obtained and deployed in the most effective manner
• Deliver projects on or under the approved schedule and budget
• Deliver on the approved scope
• Control how much risk we are taking on (possibly by regular review of the risk/reward matrix of the current portfolio of projects)

In the next post I will present some possible Project Objectives for the establishment of a PMO.