The Project Management Office for Successful Projects
Companies with a Project Management Office (PMO) are more successful in completing their projects than those without one. Why? Because a PMO provides comprehensive support to everyone involved in a project.
The Mission of a PMO Varies Depending on the Company
The tasks handled by a PMO may vary depending on factors like the size of the company, the type and size of projects it undertakes, and how international it is. They often change as their level of project management maturity increases. The PMO also takes on preparatory work for project portfolio management. In some companies, it even makes project-related decisions aligned with predefined corporate goals.
Centralized Standards and Optimization
Despite these variations, the PMO’s most important function is to standardize and optimize project management processes and tools. It may also provide advice – and possibly training – to users of the PM system in place. The PMO always assists project managers with their operational project work.
Coordination of Projects and Resources
One of the first steps to be taken when setting up a PMO is to coordinate interdependent projects and programs. The PMO is also involved in coordinating resource availability between project and department managers. In fact, this may be one of the PMO’s most demanding and time-consuming tasks. It is almost impossible to manage successfully without defined processes and tools to support them.
Portfolio Control
The PMO can also manage the approval process for new project applications along with the associated project prioritization. However, this usually only happens when the PMO has an authoritative position in the organization.
PMO Supporting Tools – Extensive Experience Provided
The experts at TPG The Project Group can provide you with comprehensive consulting while supporting you in setting up your PMO IT-support. You can count on TPG’s advice, training and coaching. Tools such as Microsoft Project Server / Project Online, SharePoint as well as TPG products based on Microsoft Technology will help make your PMO staff’s work easier.
Support PMO Tasks Effectively with IT Solutions
Current Status Boards and Control Information
For project managers, team leaders, PMO (standardization, coordination)
Links between projects at both the task and the project level. Creation of dependencies and sub-project structures for better team coordination, visualization of milestone overviews and status boards. Delivers overarching management information by backlinks from the status boards to the project plans. The TPG ProjectLink product is a must-have for multi-project and program management with Microsoft technology.
Milestone Trends and Reliable Planning
For project managers, PMO (standardization, coordination)
Project milestone histories that help detect and highlight trends affecting the rest of the project. Improves awareness of deadlines and provides better-quality planning due to standardized milestones and centralized data collection on fixed dates. The right tool will show you the milestone trends of all your projects at a glance at all times.
Resource Coordination for Line and Project Managers
For team leaders (coordination)
For resource managers in a matrix organization, it is important to know the workload and available capacity of each of their team members. This is the only way for them to make reliable commitments to project managers. The TPG TeamManager product supports ressource planning between project and line managers.
For project managers (coordination)
TPG TeamManager also supports project managers planning their resources in Microsoft Project. In the matrix organization they obtain an overview of their resource requests and the respective commitments from line management. This provides optimal support for the resource coordination process.
Optimization of Resources in the Project Portfolio
For PMO (coordination, control)
Easy manual optimization of resource planning and budget use by the PMO. Each project in the portfolio is shown as a progress bar in a central overview. The TPG PortfolioManager product thus allows you to achieve optimal resource utilization from a portfolio perspective with Microsoft technology by simple drag and drop of entire projects at the click of a mouse.
Collaboration between Finance Department and Project Managers
For project managers, financial controllers, PMO (standardization, coordination)
Integration of your project management system with other enterprise systems will standardize and optimizethe collaboration between the finance department and project managers. As a result, forward planning, budgeting, internal service accounting, invoicing and reporting will become more consistent. TPG PSLink – a worldwide leading product – integrates Microsoft Project Server with SAP and many other systems.
Automated Alerts about Project Conditions
For all project participants (operational support)
Information and recommendations for action sent out automatically by email. Reports on a variety of conditions in project data on Microsoft Project Server, such as missing feedback, projects that have not been updated, milestone deviations etc.