Five Tips for Establishing a Project Management Office (PMO)

We're always on the look-out for tips to help our clients. An interesting article on CIO.com recently highlighted these 5 tips:

1. Know what you are trying to accomplish
2. Get executive sponsorship
3. Create a reporting relationship for the project management office
4. Put the PMO in charge of process, not punitive measures
5. Select project management software

Not surprisingly the article is based on suggestions from a software tools provider (albeit with strong consultancy experience), but good advice all the same. Love the closing comment in the article "If you don't have a good process, you're not going to get good results" which anyone who has met us knows is a principle at our core.

Comments

[Michelle M. Campbell]

My concern is with item 5 (and yes the source should be considered). Often there are well meaning individuals that assume the software does all the work. So a software package is chosen only to have the PMO become a slave to the tool than spending their time managing projects.