What do You Include in Your Portfolio of Projects?

I was recently asked what I meant when I said Portfolio Management Office. What types of projects did I include? What about all the little things that crop up over the course of a month where someone just has to get on and do them.

I hear of at least two things happening right now.

First of all, big projects are being delayed or scaled back.

Secondly, things are happening "under the table" - by breaking them down so far that they fall off the radar or just on the basis of let's just get this bit of it done and that will be good enough - like putting a plaster (band-aid) over a deep cut just to keep the dirt out.

So what? Does that matter?

There will always be a creative tension between those who are trying to "get their things done" and those who have the responsibility to juggle priorities for the organisation at large.

In an ideal world, one would not overload capacity above a certain percentage - in order to cater for career development, holidays, emergencies, etc.

When constructing your Portfolio of Programmes, it would be a good thing to make a judgement to include at least of bucket for those "little" things which just need to get done so that they can be quantified in their totality. You many even want to make them part of your competitive advantage in time....

PMO - Project, Programme or Portfolio Management Office

Well, what is in a name? PMO is one of those acronyms which gets used to mean different things.

On an individual project it refers to the Project Management Office.
On a programme of work, it generally refers to the Programme Management Office (also used in some firms to denote a centralised Project Management Office function).
For many firms, it denotes the Portfolio Management Office - often organised as a matrix with a small central "hub" and individuals from various functions reporting into it (both IT and Business change managers).

Recently, there has been a rise is the usage of Change Management Office. I'll park this one for the moment as I believe it could have a different remit from a PMO.

So what does the PMO do?

Generally speaking, the PMO defines and maintains the standards and process associated with project management in an organisation. These standards can include a wide variety of processes from planning techniques to documentation structures for project deliverables. Usually they include the management reporting and supporting documentation - proect plans (baseline and updates), RAIDS (Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies) information, financials, governance, status reports, change management, and project deliverables. Many also prioritise projects and manage the resource allocations to projects.

Have I missed anything burning issues the PMO needs to cover - please post your thoughts.

If you want to read more, here the wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_management_office