Benchmarking of Project Management Office Establishment: Extracting Best Practices

This paper deals with best practices in establishing, developing, and implementing project management offices (PMOs). First, a brief overview of the theoretical background for PMOs is presented. The research approach is described, along with an overview of the benchmarking partners used. In the main part of this paper, various aspects of a PMO’s life cycle are discussed based on observations from the benchmarking partners. Through the benchmarking study, we have discovered that although the PMO design differs greatly, certain key characteristics, responsibilities, and tasks are very similar. Successful PMOs take on responsibility for different project-related functions and core tasks related to development of shared methodology and processes for handling of projects, training and competence development within project management, proposing of new projects, and quality assurance of projects. The success of the PMO is related to ensuring the necessary authority of the PMO, real organizational authority as well as academic and social credibility, top management support, and that the PMO covers true needs in the organization.