Out of all the pillars in a Center of Excellence, the Project Management Office (PMO) is the one I’m least familiar with. So if any of my PM readers want to add to anything I say, please chime in 🙂
In a Salesforce context, three main functions of the PMO is:
1. Project Management
This includes finding and allocating resources to the project based on skills, establishing budgets, and facilitating meetings. They manage daily operations, both during discovery and during implementation.
2. Road Mapping
When is the MVP scheduled for? What is the scope of the project? What happens after that? And after that? These are common questions PMs need to address. Who is delivering what and when. To do this, they work hand-in-hand with the architects, and make sure scope doesn’t creep.
3. Risk Assessment
With every project, they are knowns, there are known unknowns, and there are unknown unknowns. PMs need to assess these risks and uncertainty and communicate them widely. They keep one eye on issues, to make sure small ones don’t become big ones. Sometimes they are the messengers of bad news (just sometimes, right?)
The takeaway
In short, PMs are the glue that holds a project together. Sometimes they are not sufficiently credited when things go well, but they certainly are blamed when things go badly.