In Part 1 of How to Ensure Project Success: Implement a Project Management Office Approach, we introduced Project Management Office (PMO) and why your business might need it. Here, in Part 2, we dig deeper and look at using PMO for project turnarounds.

What Does the Project Management Office (PMO) Approach Entail?

The Project Management Office (PMO) approach helps align the best available human capital in an organization with a coach who helps organize and manage the team to execute on the action plan and achieve the goals for improvement. This strategy keeps everyone on track and enabled to meet their due dates for assigned tasks, so the project team can achieve the desired outcome for improvement. The PMO approach requires employees to volunteer to get involved in areas of the business that are usually outside of their regular duties and responsibilities, so it’s important that they are willing and interested to help out. Otherwise, they will slow the PMO process down and negatively impact the rest of the team.

Choosing this approach is the first step. The second step is finding someone who is experienced and knowledgeable in knowing how to manage a project and what to look for when establishing the team. The PMO approach helps ensure success and that budgets and timelines don’t become moving targets that ultimately get killed by management. Larger organizations who consistently have multiple projects running concurrently often establish a full-time PMO to assist with lending project tools and best practices to individual project teams. Many companies that add a full-time PMO function realized they have the need after engaging an experienced PMO consultant who can extoll the myriad of benefits this approach provides.

Project Turnaround by Establishing a PMO

When a project is going sideways — not meeting its goals, going over budget, or is behind schedule — bringing in an outside resource that has experience with the PMO approach may be the fastest way to turn the project around and get things back on track. 

Inglewood Associates’ extensive business turnaround experience is uniquely focused on quickly triaging business issues on very tight budgets and timelines and we are effectively applying our PMO expertise every time we are engaged in a business turnaround. Our PMO expertise helps ensure your project’s success.

As an example, one client had a critical strategic need to expand its operations to the western states, but the board was concerned that the management team did not have the resources to successfully implement this expansion. Inglewood was engaged to oversee the assessment and implementation of this effort. The expansion plan was presented to the board and, as a result of Inglewood’s guidance through the PMO approach, the client successfully commenced production only three months after the board approval.

About Inglewood Associates

Since 1983, Inglewood Associates has been delivering valuable business acumen to assist clients with a wide range of business challenges. Inglewood principals bring their wide-ranging experiences as interim and full-time CEOs, CFOs and Chairmen of the Board to assist clients with effective solutions for their needs and circumstances. Inglewood Associates specializes in profit improvement, business turnarounds, interim management, M&A due diligence, expert witness and project management.