June Survey: Project Management and the PMO

I’m hoping that our readership is large enough that I can get some meaningful feedback on surveys at this point.  I’ll test it with what I hope is just the beginning of monthly or periodic surveys about key areas of project management and practice.

For June, I’d like to ask readers for input concerning PMOs in the organizations they are working in.  It will be interesting to compare with other surveys and hopefully form some new understandings about where PMOs are in their maturity and what background our readers are coming from. 

• Does your organization have what you would call a centralized Project Management Office (PMO)?  Obviously if this is ‘no’ then some, but not all of the following questions won’t apply to you…but please proceed and answer what you can.
• Maturity – how long has your PMO been in existence?  If unknown, ask or take an educated guess.
• Is there a centralized review of all proposed projects by an executive council?  I’m interested here in finding out who’s reviewing the project portfolio.  Is there a prioritization process?
• Do you have established and documented processes for your PMO’s Project Management Methodology?  This is basically a maturity question.  Does your organization have a mature, documented Project Management process for the PMs to follow when running projects?
• Do you have established templates for status reports, project documents, etc.?  This is another maturity-type question.  Is everyone following the same templates and documents?
• How many Project Managers are there in your company’s PMO?  This, of course, is a straight number.  Again, if you’re uncertain, make an educated guess…this is far from scientific.
• What is the management arrangement in your PMO?  Is it one PMO Director, two or more co-managers, etc.?
• Is your PMO independent or does it report up through any IT or Software Development Management structure?  Here I’m trying to understand if the PMO is acting independently without constraints of IT or software development.  Is your PMO Director reporting to a CEO or VP or is he/she reporting to an IT Director or VP of Software Development.   In my opinion, that’s a conflict of interest, but we’ll see what’s working.
• Who makes project resource assignments?  Who assigns the PMs, developers, Business Analysts, and other technical and project resources?  Is it one individual, a council made up of the respective managers of these resources, or some other process like a dartboard.
• In what country are you located?  Trying to get a demographic question in here.
• What organization’s primary industry?  Another demographic…
• How many employees in your organization?  More demographics…this time size.

This is new to me…I’m really just interested in knowing more about how the PMOs out there operate and where the readers are coming from.  I’ll try to get more scientific with the questions next time around.  Please send your responses to me at brad@bradegeland.com.  I would also welcome any additional thoughts you have on your company’s PMO and PMOs in general. 

Depending on how fast responses come in, I’d like to post feedback on your responses by around June 22^nd.  Thanks again in advance for your help…let me know if you have any questions.

Related posts:

1. February 2010 PMP Survey Results
2. Criteria for Successful Project Management Offices
3. Misplacing Project Management in the Organization
4. February Survey: PMP Certification
5. Agile Software Development in a Standard Project Management Methodology