Project Management Office Types

The PMO or the project management office itself is quite important and there are a few different types of PMO that you will come across in your career and in the CAPM and PMP exams.

Supportive PMO

A supportive PMO is more of a consultative role. They will supply templates, best practices, and they don’t really have a high degree of control they just give people guidelines in what to do and say.

For example, “Here’s a good way to do it, but what you do is up to you.” They’re just supporting you. They’re not really directing or controlling anything.

Controlling PMO’s give more of a specific project management framework or methodology, such as the use of specific templates, forms and tools. They also ensure you use them, so they’re saying “Here are the things that you have to use, and this is the way you have to do your project.” It’s controlling the project, but through the use of templates forms and tools that the company uses. A controlling PMO asks for conformance to those governance frameworks. They might have project specific methodologies and specific ways of work.

Lastly the most controlling is the Directive PMO, which is what I personally found a little bit confusing. But directive project management offices take complete control of their projects by directly managing those projects. They have specific project managers, assigned by the PMO, and they report back to the PMO. They have a very very high degree of control in this environment.

So you have supportive, controlling (where we control through templates, governance frameworks and adhering to these) and then directive (where we’re actually taking the direction of the project through the project management office

The primary function of a PMO, no matter what type it is, is to support those project managers in a variety of ways. These ways could include managing shared resources across all projects and this is really important. You might have 10 projects but you only have enough resources for six projects, so you need to shift these around and the PMO can keep an eye on all of this. A PMO will usually have a portfolio view of things and help manage the use of those resources across those different projects.

They can help with coaching, mentoring, training and oversight, monitoring the compliance requirements and the standards and policies and procedures, helping people work with the policies and procedures within an organization, and coordinating communications across projects.

It really does come back down to that project, program and portfolio view where they have a great view of all the things that are going on. In the individual projects they can help with the communication, help with the management of it, and basically are there to support those project managers and help get the job done. And these are the Project Management Office Types.

– David McLachlan