1. An Executive View of the PMO
Rami Zakaria
Sacramento County – OCIT
Chief of e-Government and Business Services

2. Executives responsibilities:
Strategic plan for the division and the organization
Multiple organizations units with diverse functions
Large portfolio of projects
Projects and service delivery issues
Significant budget shortfalls and staffing reductions

3. What Executives want Accountability - Trust Just the facts
Patience with the system
More time, budget and staff
Suggestions & alternatives
Successful projects

4. Tips for Communications with your executive
Provide an executive summary
Have an agenda for every meeting
Send meeting notes or recaps
Be prepared with alternatives
Be Brief, focus on just the facts
Changes will happen, nothing is ever delivered according to original plan

5. Earning Executive Support
Understand your executive priorities
Communicate timely and frequently
Develop a plan, get executive buy-in, and stick to it.
Take the lead on proactively moving the project forward
Take the initiative to make things better

6. PMO Maturity Levels - Gartner
Level 0 - The project manager role has not yet been recognized as a distinct position, and good project management practices are “ handed down “ via storytelling.
At Level 1, companies begin to recognize project management as a distinct function and start building a reservoir of experiences — good and bad — with project management. Individuals who excel at managing projects emerge.
At Level 2, Good processes are written down and preserved. Bad habits and processes are discouraged. A PMO" begins to form, although its function is mostly one of monitoring and tracking ongoing projects, and not management.

7. PMO Maturity Levels - Gartner
At Level 3, companies continue doing all the Level 1 and Level 2 activities, but now they add resource management, cost management, portfolio management or project planning into the PMO, in a concerted effort to integrate people, processes, technology and finances.

8. PMO is about
“The Big Picture” Ability to see projects across the PMO’s area of responsibility
Consistency in delivering successful projects
Center for Project Management excellence
Early warning system for challenged projects
Continuous improvement and learning

9. PMO is not just about
Paperwork
Bureaucracy
Tools
processes

10. Successful PMO is about
Having the right mix of project management methodologies, processes, and tools to support project managers in delivering successful projects while giving management a clear view of projects progress across the organization

11. Questions and Answers