“Instead of a PMO focusing on accountability, a much better approach is to have the PMO take on the role of a coach and as a companion to the different component groups involved. This approach keeps the stakeholders involved and keeps them looking for ways to provide both resources and assistance for the project. It also keeps them looking for integration obstacles across the different lines of work and how to combat those obstacles.

My advice, based on my observation of many transformation initiatives is that in a complex transformation, it’s a significant risk to vest too much accountability and trust in a PMO to manage a transformation to succeed.

Because the PMO supersedes the original stakeholder team that developed the idea for change, many plans for driving the change can be lost. The result? The initiative may need to be reworked several times, increasing the time to value and wasting energy, and risking buy-in. The enterprise may complete the initiative or project as it was defined up front; but it’s not likely to get the benefits from it that would result if the original participants remain involved in managing the change.   It is much better to have a coaching PMO than an authoritative PMO”  –Peter Bendor-Samuel  for Forbes, excerpted from his article titled, “How A PMO May Cause Your Transformation Initiative To Fail“, click here to read the article in its entirety.

Insightful and well said!  PMO Advisory offers courses throughout the year designed for project professionals interested in Portfolio (PfMP), Program (PgMP), Project (PMP & CAPM) Risk (PMI-RMP) Management, and Agile (PMI-ACP) certifications.