PMO, Project Management Standards and Metrics
The Project Management Office (PMO) is an organization’s independent department responsible for managing, coordinating, and overlooking projects in a company (Tran, 2015). It can either be found at the organizational or enterprise level, where the PMO runs specific departments. It is an organization’s constant part, and when finished with a project, its attention is given towards internal projects. The PMO has different roles from the development of project standards and strategies to supporting and overseeing projects (Tran, 2015).
Most importantly, it is responsible for ensuring quality project management through constant assessment and basing their decisions on past experiences, so that project performance is improved. PMOs are found in an Information Technology organization of a manufacturing Fortune 500 company. PMOs are set at different sectors, such as IT human resources, strategic programs, and initiatives at the program level. The organization then comes up with a division of technical structure for services such as web hosting.
As aforementioned, PMO is entrusted with the duty to formulate standards. Project management standards are a document approved and established by agreement and a documented body that provides for repeated and everyday use, guidelines, or rules for activities or their outcome (Gosh et al., 2012). They work as ladders to help an organization achieve a project successfully. They are a compilation of knowledge sectors that are considered acceptable in an organization. Standards guide the industry and should not be confused with project management methodologies. For example, PMBOK is a standard belonging to the American National Standards Institute, which constitutes of generally accepted practices applicable to most projects (Gosh et al., 2012).
An individual cannot manage what he or she cannot measure. Therefore, for any project to be successful, measurement is crucial. Project management metrics are what allow organizations to determine a project’s success, evaluate the status of a project, predict risks, and assess productivity and work quality (Kerzner, 2017). Metrics as a tool, if implemented, can help improve performance through forward-thinking. An example of a metric is the Return on Investment (ROI), which measures a project’s costs versus benefits. A positive ROI means the benefits outweigh the costs…