About Program / Project Management Office (PMO)
The Five Facets of a Good PMO (Continued)
Resources - Depending on the nature of the organization and how it is structured, the concept of managing and providing resources to projects could be part of the PMOs overall remit. This could involve direct control over the resources working on a project, the project (or program) managers assigned to a set of given projects and even the contractors that may be brought in on a case by case basis. The nature and type of resources that need to be managed will be dictated by how the PMO and the company is set up. A more projectized organizations will lean towards a PMO that will have more responsibility over all resources, while a more functional organization will have a PMO that is less directly influential in this regard.
Processes – Amidst all the various aspects that a PMO might be involved in, how overall project processes are developed and controlled is probably amongst the most critical. Standards and policies provide baselines, but to truly be able to have consistent and uniform metrics across various projects, it is important to design a process that is used effectively across the board. Now processes can often be points of contention across teams, with some favoring more rapid development while others favor a more structured or waterfall type approach. Regardless, the PMO should strive to create a process that is scalable and flexible enough to allow teams to function semi-autonomously whilst simultaneously achieving the desired goal of keeping things consistent. Most process methodologies can achieve the goal of being a solution of scale and if this is instrumented correctly, the process itself will be standard enough to function effectively across the enterprise
