Abstract
Project management offices (PMO’s) are established to support organizations realize their strategic objectives by aligning project initiatives with organizational goals. This is achieved through standardizing their project management practices, methodologies, tools and techniques. To broadly understand the PMO concept, literature review was conducted to determine the typical services rendered by the PMO, the PMO configuration types appropriate for particular services and at the right capability maturity levels, and also the characteristic PMO personnel skills required to provide such services. These elements, to a large extent, were explored in the context of the South African state-owned entities (or parastatals).
While PMO’s can be beneficial, indications are that many organizations struggle to set them up optimally. Consequently, this study investigated the unique challenges encountered when establishing and managing PMO’s at South African parastatals, and how those challenges were prioritised and overcome. This is to ensure that the benefits brought about by the PMO are realised and recognised within the organization.
The study followed an interview method where qualifying participants were identified and asked to partake in the research. It was found that the people- and organization-related challenges contributed to the six topmost challenges encountered when establishing and managing PMO’s at the South African parastatals. Most of these top challenges, along with others, remained as challenges yet to be overcome at some of the parastatals. Furthermore, the results also revealed that the parastatals largely operated PMO types that were not optimally configured to render services at the desired levels of maturity to have any meaningful impact. These compounded the legitimacy of the existence of those PMO’s. As a solution, the PMO establishment, management, and process re-engineering guideline was developed to help eliminate or minimise the impact of some of the challenges.
M.Ing. (Engineering Management)