By: Joerg Koehler, Director of Marketing at Innotas
According to a recent report from PM Solutions (The State of the PMO 2012), the sheer number of PMOs and their power within an organization has risen dramatically since 2000. 87% of all surveyed companies and organizations (large and small) have a PMO in place in 2012. However, there is a huge difference in results and effectiveness between high and low performing PMOs.
So what do high-performing PMOs do differently than low-performing PMOs? The report and the above chart offer a simple answer for that:
- High-performing PMOs do a better job at managing project schedules and budgets.
- They actively engage in resource management, including forecasting, demand and capacity management.
- And they make sure that they prioritize the projects that deliver the most value to the organization.
Aside from better project management training and consistent PM processes and practices, high-performing PMOs rely heavily on Project Portfolio Management solutions as an enabling technology, which empowers the PMO to effectively manage resources, govern process management, and monitoring of project performance through functionality such as what-if resource scenario planners and dashboards. The latter is one of the top 5 priorities of PMOs in the next 12 months according to the PM Solutions’ report.
We recently interviewed Sara Holmberg, Director of the PMO for the New York State Worker’s Compensation Board, who is one of Innotas’ customers. According to her, Innotas’ cloud-based PPM solution has helped the Boards’ PMO organization to put structure around an existing governance process while implementing extensive dashboards and reporting. As a result, the PMO dramatically reduced the reporting preparation time to the Office for Technology (OFT ) from several weeks to less than a day, which is quite a noteworthy accomplishment (read the full case study here).
As additional reading, we recommend our whitepaper “Project Management Office: Seeing the Whole Picture”. Download it here.
