Subtitles of the Movie

You'll often hear about the Project Management Office or PMO and perhaps your company may already have one. In this movie, we'll clarify what a PMO is, what their primary role within an organization is and how they differ from the role of Project Manager. A PMO is established as a centralized unit within an organization to provide management of projects and programs. Think of them as a department within a company or more accurately, as an organizational structure and their job is to coordinate and oversee the company's projects. Although the magnitude of what a PMO does within an organization does vary. For example, a PMO may provide some or all of the following: a support function to the organization in regards to project management; project management training and mentoring for Project Managers; they can develop project management policies, procedures and best practices. They may have either an advisory role or full authority over company projects and they also put out project reporting and also project monitoring on an enterprise level. I'd like to take a moment to explain the differences between a PMO and a Project Manager. There is a difference between what a Project Manager does and what role a PMO is responsible for. For clarity, I'd like to first mention that typically the Project Manager does report directly to the PMO if a PMO does exist within the organization. As you'd expect the PMO and Project Manager have different objectives. For example, a Project Manager is focused on the requirements driven by their project. While the PMO views the project from an enterprise-wide perspective, a Project Manager is focused on delivering their project objectives and a PMO pursues organization objectives. In regards to resources, the Project Manager controls those resources within the project in accordance to the project objectives. And the PMO is concerned with optimizing the shared resources across the organization. On a reporting level, the Project Manager reports on the project that they are working on, while the PMO reports on the overall progress of projects typically through consolidated reporting. As you can see, the Project Manager is focused on their own given projects while the PMO focuses on a higher level. The PMO is also concerned about future improvement and compiling best practices; things that will benefit future projects. This would include archiving project reference materials, best practices and creating templates. All of the things that are considered organization process assets. You'll see they show up several times as an input. We'll be revealing this again later on, but I'd like to briefly clarify what an organizational process asset is. This refers to any asset that can be used towards the success of a project, such as formal and informal policies, plans and guidelines. A PMO can also suggest corrective action. They can exist in any type of organizational structure and we'll be clarifying organizational structures within the next couple of sections of this course. A final note here is that one of the many benefits of a PMO from a project manager's standpoint is the fact that it provides room for advancement and growth because it offers an advancement within their specific profession. I'd like to make a side note here that when creating a PMO, it's important to devote the necessary time to creating a strong foundation because if it's not set up correctly, it can damage an organization's perception of what a PMO is about and also the magnitude of what they can accomplish. But in reality, an entire course can be developed around the creation and management of a PMO. So what we've just covered are the basics within a short time. For now, just remember that a PMO typically provides a high-level perspective of projects, that it's a centralized support structure meant to increase and enhance the success of project management efforts within an organization.