Support Based PMO Vs Service Based PMO

There’s a great analogy about PMOs that we can use to highlight the changes we’ve been seeing in how PMOs have been evolving.

PMOs are moving from providing generic support to projects and programmes – what kind of support? Well, anything we want to! To start to think about having a defined list of services.

We’re moving from ‘the kids come home and say “can I have something to eat” and you’re in the kitchen using whatever skills you have; whatever recipe book you have; using what’s available; whatever time of the day it is and how hungry the kids are’ to pull something together and get it on the table.

Into a restaurant. Where there is a menu.

So we can do some planning.

Make sure the right ingredients are there for the right time of year and manage those costs.

Know our market and what our customers want.

We can set the opening hours.

And know what customers are prepared to pay for.

We’re also in control of which chefs are assigned to which meal preps. Who’s accountable, skilled and available to do it.

Service Driven PMO

With the service-driven PMO, there is a menu, a service catalogue that provides a list of services so we can make sure that we have the tools; processes; templates place to support the services. We can identify the skills required and make sure we have them available to deliver the services.

It becomes an interesting conversation when a PMO is requested to provide more services when the resources are not available and the right skills are lacking.

In this five minute clip, Eileen talks about the service-driven PMO and the stakeholder engagement required to provide the right services for the customers of the PMO. The PMO has to understand what its customers want and in our restaurant analogy, what they are prepared to pay for.

If you’re interested in setting up a service-based PMO, you can also take a look at the Setting Up a PMO, a 2-day course that gives you what you need to provide a PMO that customers want.