Managing projects effectively can be tough. There are lots of things to keep track of, which can get more and more overwhelming as your business grows. Fortunately, there are a lot of strategies you can use to streamline your project management work. Today, we’re going to be covering one of the less popular ones out there: the project management office.

We’re going to explore everything about project management offices—including their functions and different types. But, to start, let’s go over the basics: what is a PMO?

What is a project management office?

A project management office or PMO is a division within a company that’s responsible for directing how projects are managed in that firm. In short, a PMO manages your company’s project management efforts. On the surface, this sounds like an unnecessary, redundant task. However, project management offices have their unique use cases, which we’ll discuss later on when we get to the main question of this article.

Shifting our focus back to the main purpose of PMOs, they fulfill their responsibilities through several means. These include documentation, standards, and the effective deployment of certain strategies. In turn, these dictate the main functions of a project management office, which is conveniently our next topic of discussion.

Key Responsibilities of a Project Management Office

Depending on how you implement a PMO at your business, its responsibilities can be essentially endless. But, the most common functions of project management offices are the following:

• Setting project management standards
• Creating management guideline documentation
• Taking advantage of the economies of repetition

Setting project management standards

The first important function of a PMO is setting standards for project management in your firm. These will guide your project managers on how they should fulfill their responsibilities. Standards typically include what methodologies and tools managers should use, as well as what pitfalls they should be wary of.

Creating documentation for management guidelines

A PMO does more than set rules—it also writes them down. This may seem obvious on the surface, but there’s more to writing documentation than initially meets the eye. PMOs must do so with clarity and conciseness in mind. They must also take into consideration the variety of projects your managers might be working on. Otherwise, they may get confused and end up ignoring your guidelines entirely.

Taking advantage of the economies of repetition

Another common function of a PMO is ensuring that the same strategies are used throughout your company repeatedly. Known as the economies of repetition, this concept can help your staff streamline their processes. By using the same methodologies over and over, your project managers will become proficient in them, boosting their productivity.

Different Types of PMOs

Project management offices come in more than one variety. Depending on the size of your company and the types of projects it takes on, you might have several PMOs doing different things at once. A few of the most popular types of PMOs are the following:

• Enterprise PMOs – These are the most common types of project management offices that you might see in a large corporation. There’s typically only one of them in a business and they oversee all projects, regardless of their size. Besides setting management guidelines, these PMOs also ensure that all projects align with the company’s strategies.
• Divisional PMOs – A divisional PMO will focus on managing projects within a specific division. These are typically used in businesses that have several units that operate fairly independently of each other. An example of this is a company that makes multiple vastly different products at once, like electronics and cars.

Supportive vs Controlling vs Directive PMOs

Besides enterprise and divisional PMOs, project management offices can come in different varieties of control. The three main ways of control a PMO may utilize are:

• Supportive – A supportive PMO will have a role similar to a consultancy. Such offices will advise project managers on what best practices and guidelines they should follow. However, they won’t go any further than this, like by requiring compliance.
• Controlling – Unlike a supportive PMO, a controlling office will require compliance with its standards. These project management offices will conduct periodic audits of project management practices in your business. They’ll then deal with any non-compliant projects by working with their managers.
• Directive – Directive PMOs take an even greater degree of control when it comes to dealing with non-compliant projects. They’ll often take action by themselves to ensure all projects within an organization follow their standards.

While all three are valid options, most companies won’t need the higher levels of control offered by a directive or controlling PMO. You might need them only if your business is large enough that a supportive PMO isn’t effective. This transitions us nicely to our next point of discussion: does your business need a project management office in the first place?

Does your business need a project management office?

Whether you need a PMO at your firm or not largely depends on two factors: your company’s size and the variety of its projects.

Company size

Smaller firms typically do not face significant challenges in their management efforts. However, as your business grows, managing an increasing number of people and projects will become difficult. At some point, you’ll stand to benefit measurably from a project management office. You’ll likely want to start with a supportive PMO. As your company continues expanding, you might then want to transition to its controlling or directive counterparts.

Variety of projects

Another important factor when considering a PMO is the variety of your company’s projects. If your business offers several vastly different products, you might want a PMO to manage all of your divisions effectively. As mentioned previously, an example of this can be a company that produces electronics and cars at the same time—such as Xiaomi and Sony.

Reasons to not establish a PMO at your business

Having covered why you might want a PMO at your business, let’s now explore why you might want to avoid it instead. This also comes down to two factors: increased overhead and costs.

Increased management overhead

Implementing a PMO at your organization will involve expanding your team. As a result, you’ll need to manage more people. While this may not be a significant undertaking for a larger company, it can greatly increase your workload if your business is a startup.

Increased costs

Expanding your team with a project management office has direct costs associated with it. In addition to increased payroll costs, your project managers will need to spend time ensuring compliance with your PMO standards. Just like our previous point of discussion, these effects won’t be measurable for a larger team. However, they may not be worth it at all for smaller companies.

How Time Tracking Software Can Help You Manage Projects Better

Before closing off this article, let’s explore how you can manage your projects more effectively—both with a PMO and without. Time tracking software can help you manage your team’s work more effectively. Using an app with Project and Task Management functionality will enable your staff to perform their best. Here are a few ways it can achieve this:

Identifying performance bottlenecks: Time trackers make finding bottlenecks like distractions easy.

Allocating resources more effectively: Identify overworked staff and distribute tasks evenly across your team.

Setting accurate estimates: Monitoring your team’s workflows will allow you to set more accurate estimates, both in terms of timelines and budgets.

Final Thoughts

A project management office can streamline your management work with clearly defined standards and guidelines. It can help your project managers stay organized, boosting their productivity. However, PMOs have their downsides as well. They can require a significant amount of resources to set up. This makes them less ideal for smaller teams, where management challenges aren’t as prevalent in the first place.

Whether you choose to establish a PMO at your business or not, time tracking software will streamline your work. High-quality ones like WebWork will help your team stay organized and productive.