Owners or Facilitators?
PMOs are not set up to fail, but they won’t win many popularity contests among business units. “Who needs a PMO?” some may protest. “We understand our business the best. Who are they to come in and tell us how to do our work? They don’t bring in any revenue, ” could be the common complaint.
A credit card processing company that offshores various types of IT work has a four to five person PMO. The owner of one of the pieces of IT work we spoke to, however, was dismissive of the PMO. “I am trying to get [the offshore project] done individually,” he said. “ If I am doing something only for let’s say Germany, then I don’t need a PMO, but if I am doing something that will affect Europe, then I may use the PMO.”
In the face of such reluctance on the part of businesses, the job of the PMO gets very difficult. How can they overcome this hesitation on the part of business managers?
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Management can get the buy-in of the businesses by funding the PMO and charging them for services
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Management should foster an environment of acceptance. Whether the role of the PMO is that of operations or a more expansive one, is a function of the company’s culture and business model of its outsourcing initiative
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PMOs must realize that they are facilitators and not the owners of projects and relationships
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PMOs must think of themselves as relationship managers between the businesses and the providers, and not solely as vendor managers
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PMOs should steer clear of telling the businesses how to do their work. The units understand their domain better than the PMO ever will, though the PMO may have a better sense of how to achieve a process transformation or utilize lower-cost labor
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PMOs must demonstrate to the businesses that their expertise lies in processes and project management.
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“PMOs have to demonstrate what the business may not be good at — show them processes that can help leverage [outsourced] resources,” says Dr. Fielding. “Once the PMO becomes a hindrance to the business by putting up road blocks and self-serving conditions on it, the job of that PMO will go.”
