Beki Zajac | PMP, PMI-ACP, PMO-CP

A PMO needs to deliver value to an organization in the way that organization defines value.

For the past two years, I have been working to advance project management maturity within an organization. When creating frameworks and providing process guidance for project management, there are challenges, missteps, and successes. When I started on this journey, I didn’t find a lot of materials online to help me out, so I wanted to create this blog series for other leaders trying to build their Project Management Office (PMO) from scratch.

This is the first of those posts and addresses what I believe is the most important thing in developing project management practices or any other transformational change within organizations: humility.

First, what do I mean when I say humility? My definition is ‘admitting that you don’t have all the answers, that you sometimes do the wrong thing, and that you need help to deliver something this big.’

This is important because transforming the way projects are delivered within an organization is a big change, both for the project managers and business units receiving the outcomes of projects. Some of the things you’ll have to introduce in order to control projects will be annoying to people. Some people won’t understand why things have to change and others will think you’re not changing things fast enough. And of course, there will always be someone who thinks they have a better way of doing things.

If you come in with the belief that you have all the answers and people should just do what you say without discussion or debate, you’ll be in for a world of hurt. So, humility helps.

Humility allows you to take a step back, look at all the models and industry advice, and then look at your organization and ask ‘what do you need?’ Not all PMOs should look the same and not all paths to maturity can look the same. What you’ve done at another organization may not work at your current organization and things that worked 5 years ago may not work today.

A PMO needs to deliver value to the organization in the way that organization defines value. Sometimes this will mean adding controls to projects to prevent cost or schedule overruns. Sometimes it will mean improving the visibility into what projects are delivering. And sometimes it will mean supporting the organization with learning so that everyone can be a good partner to project teams. The most important thing when starting your journey will be asking the organization what it needs from its project management function and its PMO and then really listening to what people tell you.

Only once you know what the organization needs can you start to look at the tools and models available and see which ones fit. But in order to do this, you will need to throw away any idea that you have all the answers. You may need to stop yourself from doing something that you think is really important if it’s not what your specific organization needs.

So if you’re starting on the journey of creating or maturing a PMO, how can you start off in the best way?

1. Start by figuring out who is most affected by project management. Who benefits or suffers by the work of projects? Who interacts the most with the PMO?
2. Ask key stakeholders from those groups what is important to them. Find out what aspects of projects are frustrating or confusing. Learn what is working well.
3. Ask important people to describe their perfect vision of the future. Prompt them to finish the sentence: “When our project management practices are mature, I’ll have…”
4. Look to tools from organizations like the Project Management Institute that help you map what the organization needs against various PMO functions and services.
5. Develop your road map and then get feedback. Lots of feedback!

Future posts will cover more aspects of the transformational journey to mature project management practice within organizations, but I will leave you with one final thought. Spend the time upfront to learn as much as you can about what is needed from project management and a PMO at your organization to save yourself from costly missteps as you start to develop your processes and services. As the old adage goes, an ounce of preparation is worth a pound of cure.