A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group within an organization that defines and maintains standards for project management.  A PMO generally bases its project management principles, practices, and processes on some industry standard methodology such as PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) or PRINCE2 (Project in Controlled Environments).

Over time, a PMO generally will become the source for guidance, documentation, and metrics related to the practices involved in managing and implementing projects within the organization.

There was a study conducted that provided the following statistics:

• Organizations with PMOs complete twice as many projects than those without PMOs.

• High-performing organizations outsource 135 percent more than low-performing organizations.

• 76 percent of recently surveyed companies reported that they had created a PMO, and the longer the PMO had been in operation, the more project success rates improved.

• Those with a PMO operating for more than four years reported a 65 percent success rate increase.

• The top two reasons for establishing a PMO are improving project success rates and implementing standard practices.

• 65.8 percent of high-performing organizations have enterprise PMOs.

• PMOs can deliver a return in three to six months by providing the visibility needed to cancel, postpone, or scale back unnecessary or less strategic projects.

• As PMOs mature, they are significantly better at meeting critical success factors, including having effective sponsorship, accountability, competent staff, quality leadership, and demonstrated value.

• The top two issues for PMOs are forecasting the need for resources and resolving resource conflicts.

To have a successful PMO Office, the following dimensions need to be evaluated and followed.

1.        Benefits:  collective visibility for estimating and tracking financial and strategic project benefits

2.       Selection:  the scalability, clarity, and quality of project funding practices

3.       Issues, Risks, and Dependencies:  issue escalation and resolution, aggregate risk management, and “air traffic control” over project inter-dependencies

4.       Change control:  a practical level of business value protection and visibility

5.       Project Planning:  a repeatable, scalable framework for organizing project efforts that use common metrics and deliverables

6.       Financial Visibility:  a financial information framework that incorporates control and accountability without excessive data manipulation

7.       Communication and Reporting:  a procedural and  technical platform to collaborate on deliverables, coordinate schedules, and resources, and effectively collect and use standardized project health metrics

8.       Training:  a set of training materials and standards to promote fundamental project management skills, enabled by automated workflows to simplify procedural gate-keeping

9.       Quality:  the criteria for deliverables quality and the process for monitoring this quality