For many IT organizations, setting up a Project Management Office (PMO) is a lot like a New Year’s resolution: The best intentions don’t change anything unless you know the whole scope of what needs to be changed. In most cases, the organization knows that it needs to improve its project management, but it’s not sure what the first steps should be.

When we work with IT organizations to enhance the effectiveness of their project and portfolio management, we start by assessing where they are now: What are the needs, perceived weaknesses, challenges, opportunities, and anticipated benefits? After building a team to focus on PM effectiveness, we start our work by conducting a survey of the team to gather current impressions about how project management is handled now. Conducting the survey at both the beginning and end of a PMO development effort provides a yardstick for measuring specific improvements later on.

We’ve posted a copy of one version of our Project Management Effectiveness Survey on our Resources page. It’s available free to registered visitors. Of course, we encourage you to register for access to our entire library of white papers, technical articles, tools, tips, and other documents available free on our Resources page.

If you’d like to talk with us further about our project and portfolio management services, send us a note on our Contact Us page.