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Business-Driven PMOs are about Change Management

In the Ultimate Guide to Business-Driven PMO Success we defined a business-driven PMO as follows. A business-driven PMO enables business change with a business stakeholder value-oriented mindset supported by:

• Business leadership (i.e. reports to and is typically hosted by C-level or line of business management or highly business-driven CIOs)

• Business strategic objectives, goals and initiatives (and understanding of associated risks)

• Business outcome and value delivery metrics and scorecards such as ROI, TTM/TTV and customer satisfaction

Thus, in essence all PMOs are about enabling and executing change using projects, programs and portfolio management and execution as the vehicle for change. Traditional PMOs are about executing tactical change (project-level outcomes) like incremental process improvement. Business-driven PMOs are about enabling “strategic” or even “transformational change.” 

As such, potentially more appropriate names for this function include the business change management office, the business change execution office or simply the change execution office (CEO). If nothing else the latter is a cute way to signal the strategic importance of the organization and attract attention and talent. After all, who doesn’t want to report directly to the CEO!

A business-driven approach that focuses on strategy and change execution will require that PMOs:

(1) Understand how business strategy and IT portfolio management “fit” together; and
(2) Develop new capabilities and strengths to deal with rapid change.

In fact, the former was listed as the #1 topic of interest in a Gartner pre-event poll of PPM & IT Governance Summit attendees with over 70% indicating a “high” or “very high” level of interest.  Both of these requirements will be expanded upon in upcoming blog posts.