Multiple Project Offices

Multiple PMOs

It is possible for a single organization to have more than one PMO. There are three reasons for having multiple PMOs, and each reason leads to a different model for what the PMOs do and how they relate to one another.

Models for Multiple PMOs

An organization may have multiple PMOs for any of these three reasons:

1. The organization is very diverse, and will remain diverse, so a different PMO serves each part of the organization.
2. The organization is currently diverse, but is in the process of integrating to become less diverse.
3. The organization is unified, but large, and each PMO serves the organization in a different capacity.

Multiple PMO model for an organization that will remain very diverse

This model applies in two different situations.

The first situation is that of a holding company, which is a financial entity that owns two or more subsidiary businesses, in unrelated industries. Each subsidiary business will benefit from a PMO, but because the companies have no common business processes, there is no value in having a single PMO for the entire company. For example, if a single holding company owned an airline, an automobile parts manufacturer, and a chain of hotels, a PMO would be useful for each subsidiary business, but there would be no value in creating a single PMO for the whole company.

The second situation is one of geographical diversity with the subsidiaries in the same business, with regional offices operating in different parts of the globe with their own cultures, with no business functions cutting across regions. For example, a global sales company might find value in creating a PMO for each region, but there may be no value in PMOs communicating with each other. The same would not be true for a global manufacturing company, where, because the same processes are used in different regions, standardization would bring more benefit.

In both of these cases, each subsidiary company or region should have its own PMO.