It’s important to communicate the value of your project management office (PMO) across the business. You can spend a lot of time measuring the value of your PMO and that information needs to be dispersed across the business.

When you successfully communicate the value of your PMO you should see an increase in trust in your role and more support from both the C-suite and your colleagues. How do can you get the message across? We’re going to explore:

  • The information you need to communicate your PMO’s value
  • Who you need to be able to get your message to
  • The potential results of a good communication plan for your PMO

How do I measure the value of a PMO?

A PMO will have different definitions of success depending on the business or organisation it’s within. How your PMO’s board-level sponsor chooses the KPIs will be derived from the strategic and operational goals.

Some KPIs that measure the value added in a PMO could include:

  • The number of projects that have successfully been delivered
  • The return on investment of projects
  • Customer and employee satisfaction

Along with a range of others, which we’ve discussed previously.

Who do I need to communicate my PMO’s value to?

A PMO should be an integral part of a business – the projects that it manages will reach into every department and function at some point. You’ll have an obligation to report to the board on a period basis, but is that enough?

Having the whole business understand what your office does will increase the respect for the role your play and make it easier to share resources and get information to inform projects. There are three main players who you should be communicating the value of your PMO to:

1.       The board

During your regular performance review, you will need to justify the value of your PMO as its leader. There will be KPIs in place to present to your leader that will communicate what the PMO is adding to the business.

Along with this mandatory meeting, you still present your successes at other times of the year. When a project delivers early and under budget, or your get great customer satisfaction scores for a project, you can send out congratulatory email or even request your superior pay a visit to the successful teams.

When the board of directors see your PMO in their inbox and on their agenda delivering positive messages, they will be come advocates of your work. If you’re looking to expand your scope or support large projects, you’re more likely to see them get backed.

2.       Your colleagues

A well-run PMO should have good relations across the business, whether it’s a start-up company or a multinational. However, it is possible that there will be negative feeling about a PMO – lots of people aren’t fans of the governance and compliance role within a PMO.

Communicating your PMOs value to your colleagues is important. You need their buy-in when a change is rolled out and support to second team members to projects when needed. Running sessions to discuss how your role affects the business in a positive way or creating visuals around the business about your project wins will keep your positive message in everyone’s mind.

You’ll know you’re getting it right when you receive positive messages and requests for support from across the business. Rather than other leaders being wary of your PMO’s role, they should being to enthusiastically support it once they can link it to how their work like has improved.

3.       Stakeholders

The set-up of your PMO will dictate the amount of contact you have with stakeholders. It’s good practice to have open communication channels with project stakeholders so they understand the reporting line of a project.

You’ll likely be called on to present key metrics of a project at different stages since your PMO is monitoring project success. We’ve discussed previously how you can distil your key metrics into measures and help stakeholders understand a project journey.

Great communication of performance throughout the project journey should see an increase in customer satisfaction scores as well more stable project requirements with less changes requested.

The take home

Communicating the value of your PMO to the leaders, your colleagues across departments, and project stakeholders is important to the office’s overall success. Benefits such as more trust from the board, more support from colleagues, and more satisfied stakeholders and customers.