breakout session overview
Over the past decade, the Center for Business Practices has been
involved in gathering data on project management office trends from our
survey research, our Benchmarking Forums, and our PMO of the Year Award
competitions. In that time, we have seen a steady climb in the indicators of
organizational influence for project managers and project management.
Nowhere is this increased influence more notable than in tracking the
prevalence and roles of the PMO.
Yet questions remain. Top project management leaders are still
struggling with verifying the value of their PMOs. The results from our
research suggest that merely implementing a PMO is not a panacea. Instead,
it is PMO maturity that makes a difference to the organization. As PMOs
become more mature, organizational success metrics improve. In addition, the
mature PMO takes on more roles—in both portfolio management and people
management, thus elevating its value to the organization.
In The State of the PMO, Jim Pennypacker, Director of the CBP, will
discuss current practices as well as trends that will lead to improved
project success. You’ll leave with fact-based information that can be used
to benchmark your organization against others, as well as help you build
your business case to justify the value of the PMO to senior management.
James S. Pennypacker is Director of the Center for Business
Practices, the research arm of Project Management Solutions, Inc. (PM
Solutions). He has authored numerous CBP Research Reports, including The
State of the PMO, The State of Project Management, Strategy & Projects, The
Value of Project Management, Project Management Maturity, Project Portfolio
Management Maturity, Implementing Project Management Systems, Project
Control Functions, Recovering Troubled Projects, and High-Performance
Project Teams.
Jim facilitates the CBP Benchmarking Forums and the Annual CBP
Summit and regularly presents papers at professional conferences, including
the PMI Global Congress, PMI Research Conference, PMI Chapter Meetings,
ProjectWorld, Rocky Mountain Project Management Symposium, Microsoft Project
Customer Advisory Council Conference, Project Leadership Conference, Project
Portfolio Management Conference and the AMSI PMO Summit. He has authored
numerous articles published in a variety of professional publications,
including PM Network, Project Management Journal, AMA Handbook of Project
Management, Optimize Magazine, Portfolio Knowledge, and IEEE Transactions on
Engineering Management.
