Part IV

Establishing and Maturing an Enterprise Project Support Office

Project offices and program offices have been around for a very long time but variations of the modern Project Management Office (PMO) have only been popular since 1960. They have served their purpose with mixed blessings. Their responsibility for return on investment (ROI) is a continuing topic of debate. My position is that the project, program, and portfolio sponsors are responsible and that is the position I have taken in Part II and reinforce that in Part IV.

In Chapter 3 and Part III I defined my position regarding the generalist and the specialist and the fact that to be a complex project manager the professional must be multi-disciplined. The project management (PM), business analysis (BA), business processes (BP), and information technology (IT) disciplines define the position profile of a project manager. Continuing with that model in Part IV the project support office (PSO) must also support those disciplines.