The Program Management Office Advantage

Are the project managers in your organization scrambling for people, time, and funding? Are they wasting effort on overlapping projects — or the wrong projects altogether? Maybe your organization is plagued by cost overruns, delays, and cancellations? Program Management Office (PMO) is the newest solution to the challenge of how to effectively manage complex, concurrent projects.

As a single office responsible for overseeing all of an organization’s projects, PMO goes well beyond the traditional scope of project management, adding a new level of efficiency, accountability, and strategic oversight. Now you can put the enormous benefits of PMO to work in your organization with the strategies and tools in The Program Management Office Advantage. This all-in-one resource helps you:

• Evaluate the pros and cons of establishing PMO in your organization, and prepare a cost-benefit analysis to justify your decision.
• Set up a world-class PMO from scratch, overcoming resistance from internal project managers and outside vendors.
• Determine where to locate the PMO in your organization’s structure for optimal interaction.
• Build a customer-centric approach to helping your project teams achieve their goals.
• Set detailed guidelines for managing vendors and contractors, and maintain a database of pertinent information on each.
• Implement a five-step knowledge-harvesting process to ensure that all project documentation is collected and stored.
• Train your project managers in PMO best practices to continually improve your organization’s performance.
• Select the projects that best serve your company’s goals and align with its strategy.
• Use a gateway review at each stage of a project to ensure that results are delivered, budgets are approved, and resources are available.

From quickly getting projects off the ground to consistently measuring results to successfully leading the department, The Program Management Office Advantage gives you the latest, most effective PMO strategies and tools — in an easy-to-understand format that lets you put the information to work immediately.

• Part I: Overview
1. Defining the Program Management Office
2. Justifying the Program Management Office
3. The Program Management Office in the Organization
   
• Part II: The Central Organizer
4. Customer Management
5. Vendor Management
6. Communications Management
7. Project Office Management
8. Project Knowledge Management
9. Project Management Training
10. Project Resource Management
    
• Part III: Processes
11. Project Selection
12. Controlling Project Progress
13. Program Monitoring and Control
14. Project Audit
15. Systems to Drive the PMO
    
• Part IV: A Business Division
16. Establishing a PMO
17. Implementing a PMO
18. Leadership in a PMO
19. Careers Within a PMO
    
• Part V: Conclusion
20. Final Thoughts on PMO
    
• Appendices
• Appendix A. Sample PMO Business Plan
• Appendix B: Sample Project Office Templates
• Appendix C: Sample PMO Charter
• Appendix D: Sample PMO Integration Plan
  

This is one of these books, who looks good when you read the back of it, the TOC seems interesting, but when you start reading it, you suddenly realize there is no content whatsoever! When you then check the references, you find little relevance to the topics. And then you start to understand that this is more of an intellectual exercise, as no practical examples or case studies are given and the samples are simplistic to the moronic level.

I want my hour back (the time it took to read this sad excuse to bullshit)!

Don't even get near this book, if you have any experience whatsoever or any functional braincells.