Complete Your IT Projects On Time and On Budget with a PMO
Nearly every growing business meets the same obstacle. At some point, the volume of projects you’re fulfilling balloons. Your staff increases to accommodate those projects. Your management team, in an effort to streamline workflow, improve efficiency, and facilitate consistency across departments, needs to standardize its project management techniques and outline best practices.
Once organizations reach this level of growth, they build a department called a Project Management Office (PMO). Smaller companies may prefer to outsource their PMO, hiring a third-party agency.
What does a PMO do?
Professionals in project management and masters of project best practices, a PMO creates standardized project management processes that help your company meet project objectives. Its employees monitor and report on each project’s progress, ensuring that every project meets its deadline and stays within budget.
A PMO is also a go-to resource for project metrics, documentation, and project management training. Depending on the company, a PMO could also be responsible for communicating progress to shareholders.
PMOs are led by a Project Manager (PM) – the expert and functional linchpin that delivers your project on-time and on budget. Armed with information, authority, and a gift for communication, the PM’s primary role is to make sure the project stays on track and comes to a successful completion. Project managers can carry a Project Management Professional (PMP)® certification, an industry-recognized certification for project managers.
How a Project Management Office Can Benefit Your Organization
Imagine you have a pending high-value project. Fulfilling this project is essential to building your company’s reputation. How can you make sure, as you move toward the deadline, that your employees are productive, your spending is under budget, and your customers are satisfied?
For more and more businesses, the answer is a Project Management Office. One manager and his or her team cannot handle all the operational elements of a major project and maintain big-picture focus on issues like customer satisfaction, overall productivity, and budget requirements.
A PMO provides that oversight, ultimately saving your business a significant amount of time and money.
Three Aspects to Consider
When you’re developing or outsourcing a Project Management Office or Project Management professional, make sure your solution consists of these three key elements:
1. Project Manager
As we have shown, the Project Manager leads the team of certified project personnel to ensure that your project has the right resources. In fact, when you outsource your project to a professional service organization, they will ensure that the team that completes your project is skilled, trained, and certified to meet the requirements of your timeframe and budget.
And when it comes to the budget, keep in mind that you should avoid overshooting the technician pool’s certification. In other words, your project partner should source certified technicians that meet your project needs, never exceeding them, which only drives up the cost.
2. Certified and Vetted Project Personnel
Certification of your project team ensures that your team knows the technology they’re working with and can complete your project with a wealth of knowledge and experience. While technology equipment and software have many similarities, it also has significant idiosyncrasies that require an experienced technician to navigate.
As important is the vetting process. Verification of certification, qualification, and background checks are critical when you are sourcing project technicians. After all, you will invite these individuals into your business and provide them with security access to your most critical business systems.
3. Reports and Information
Don’t underestimate how much you will rely on the reports and information your project team provides to you. Your project manager and project team should provide you with complete transparency of the project’s progress and any challenges faced by the team that could impact the completion schedule and budget.
In summary, a Project Management Office serves as the hub of your project’s success. The technical expertise and project management discipline provided by these professionals cannot be undervalued. After all, the technology and processes that run your businesses, well, run your business.
Contact Us Today to Schedule Your Consultation
If your organization needs newly defined standards for project management, don’t hesitate to reach out to Teksetra. We offer best-in-class, enterprise-level project management services and employ only certified Project Management Professionals. For businesses with a reduced IT department, we also offer IT staffing and technology solutions.
