PMO (Project Management Office)

A PMO (Project Management Office) is the team or function that defines and maintains project management standards across an organization. It provides governance, shared methods and templates, and a consolidated view of all projects, so delivery is consistent rather than reinvented by each team.

What a PMO does

• Sets methods, standards, and templates for how projects are run
• Provides governance and reporting across the portfolio
• Supports project managers with tools, training, and oversight
• Gives leadership a single, comparable view of project health

Types of PMO

PMOs range from supportive (offering best practices and help) to controlling (requiring compliance with standards) to directive (running projects directly). Most organizations land somewhere in between based on their needs.

The PMO's reporting burden

A recurring PMO challenge is consolidating status from many projects into one comparable, current picture — manually, this is slow and goes stale fast. Leading the portfolio from the same data the projects are led with addresses exactly this. See leading a project portfolio with ProjectBuddy and the Enterprise edition on the pricing page.