Organization Project Management office

There are three types of PMO

Directive PMO
Manages and controls all projects within the organization. PMO control is high

Controlling PMO
Defines project governance through project management frameworks, templates, forms project management activities and communications. PMO control is moderate

Supportive PMO
Acts as a consultative role. Advices best practices. The PMO control is low.

Program Management and Portfolio management

A program is defined as group of related projects, subprograms and program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually.

Programs may include elements of related work outside the scope of the discrete projects n the program.

Program management focusses on

a) Resolving resource constraints and/or conflicts that affects multiple projects with the program
b) Aligning organizational/strategic direction
c) Resolving issues and change management.

Portfolio Management
A portfolio refers to the projects, programs sub portfolio and operations managed as a group to achieve strategic objectives.

Let's take an example of an IT giant who is looking after various client projects based on the domains they are working.

While Banking sector may have different needs to oil sector or automobile sector.

Hence the IT giant created a portfolio of its programs so that it could cater to the domain needs.  This is called a strategic initiative. Hence portfolio management will always be involved in strategic objectives.

Strategic objectives can be obtained via program management objectives. Taking the example forward, banking sector will have many clients.To have focussed approach to cater to various projects for each client may have. For example a banking sector may have core banking system as one project, employee management system as another and so on. To cater this a program management is created.

Each program is now catering to various projects.

Iron Triangle in PMP

Iron triangle 

Any project is governed by three factors

• Time 
• Cost 
• Scope

These three are vital ingredients for developing a project.
Scope is defined by requirements.
Time defines how the scope of a project will be achieved
Cost defines the resource and material applicability

Questions:  Think if any of these parameters are impacted what would happen. Lets do this with an example.
a)  You have just been appointed as a project manager and while you are understanding the scope, you think the time left is too less and the cost which has been spent till now is very high.  So according to you what would impact it would have.

Ans. Quality.

What is a project

So today I would like to discuss what is a project as per PMBOK

A project is temporary in nature taken up to create a unique product, service or result.

What does the above statement mean.

Lets take a few examples
Example 1:
A maintenance contract where the same job has to be done again and again. A maintenance job can be for a building, or an IT product.

Is this a project.
Think

• Does it suffice unique in nature
• Would it create a product or service or a result
• Is it time bound

Answers to the above questions

• Does it suffice unique in nature
• No its a repetitive 
• Would it create a product or service or a result
• No its just an ongoing work
• Is it time bound
• Yes it can be bounded by a contract but again its repetitive in nature.

So where do we classify this kind of work. These kind of work are classified as part of operation.


Example 2:
I am working in a manufacturing industry, "TomAM". Client "AB" has given special order to make 50 sets of electrical switches. The first set of order delivery date is 10/21/2015 and final order delivery date is 10/01/2016. Are we here talking about the project which TomAM needs to execute.

Answer to this question is "Yes"

• The project is temporary in nature
• The project will delivery a specific product
• The project is time bound. 

In next topic we will deal with Projects Program and Portfolio

A few questions on the same topic can be found on sample-tests.com