Five Steps to Creating the Strategic Enterprise Project Management Office

The concept of the enterprise project management office or EPMO has grown in popularity in recent years. Organizations have recognized that fewer and fewer projects are self-contained within individual departments and instead cross multiple business functions. Traditionally, project management offices (PMOs) have been aligned with IT, in part because of the role that technology plays in all projects. However, with technology now shifting to become a contributor to those business transformation initiatives, it is ineffective to maintain the PMO as an IT function.

A single, enterprise-wide PMO (EPMO) is the natural answer to this evolution, providing support for a consistent approach to project execution across all areas of the organization. However, many organizations that have implemented EPMOs have failed to see the improvement in project execution performance that was anticipated. EPMOs have become exercises in leveraging economies of scale rather than strategic offices that provide leadership to business-critical initiatives. That, in turn, has caused other organizations to question whether they should move to an EPMO model. So how do organizations create an EPMO that provides strategic leadership, leverages the enterprise portfolio management work, and delivers a consistent project execution model? In this paper, we will look at the five steps necessary to deliver sustainable success.