What is the the defintion of project management office?

The true definition of a project management office (PMO) is as described in some of these answers - a functional center of expertise for project managers within an organization.

However, not all PMO's are created equal. Some PMO's don't have all the project managers reporting into them, and perform more of a support role - providing project managers across the organization with help on such things as training, project management tool support, best practices etc.

What a PMO Can Do
At transportation company Schneider National, a PMO provides the foundation for eventually doing portfolio management, according to Mark Mullins, vice president of finance for IT. And at Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU), CIO John Kenagy launched a PMO to help his 350-member IT department improve its project management acumen. "Doing a large project takes a village of people, and we don't want to approach each project as if starting from scratch," Kenagy says.

But while PMOs vary in terms of size, structure and responsibilities, Curtis Cook, president and CEO of consulting company Novations Project Management in Atlanta, says CIOs can expect PMOs to function in the following seven areas.

Project support: Provide project management guidance to project managers in business units.

Project management process/methodology: Develop and implement a consistent and standardized process.

Training: Conduct training programs or collect requirements for an outside company.

Home for project managers: Maintain a centralized office from which project managers are loaned out to work on projects.

Internal consulting and mentoring: Advise employees about best practices.

Project management software tools: Select and maintain project management tools for use by employees.

Portfolio management: Establish a staff of program managers who can manage multiple projects that are related, such as infrastructure technologies, desktop applications and so on, and allocate resources accordingly.

Project Management is the discipline of defining and achieving targets while optimizing the use of resources (time, money, people, materials, energy, space, etc) over the course of a project (a set of activities of finite duration).

Microsoft also has a product called Microsoft Project that many managers will use to aid in their work.

Here is a simple definition....

Project Management Office Definition:

If you only have a couple projects at any one time, you may be able to easily implement project management discipline. However, the larger your organization gets, and the more projects that are executed at one time, the more difficult it becomes to develop a comprehensive methodology, train everyone and enforce the consistent use of the methodology on all projects. Without this consistency, the full value of implementing a common project management methodology is not reached.
Many organizations have attempted to solve this problem by creating a focused Project Management Office (PMO) and giving this organization varying aspects of responsibility for projects and project management methodology.
There are many potential products and services that a PMO can be responsible for, depending on the needs of the organization and the vision of the PMO sponsor. The group is typically responsible for acquiring and deploying a common project management process to the rest of the organization. However, they can also do much more, including:
鈥?Training and coaching
鈥?Project audits
鈥?Consolidated project status reporting
鈥?Project management certification
鈥?Portfolio management


If you want to download a Project Management Plan template
to help you get started just click on the url below.

I hope this helped you.

http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templa...