This is part 6 of a series of blog posts in which I look at the components of a PMO and give you a pragmatic way to increase your PMO success and improve your PM maturity.

Over the past weeks we have looked at the 4 components of a Project Management Office, which I defined as

• PPM Application
• Collaboration Platform
• Desktop Tools
• Content

My basic premise is that A) you will find these 4 components in every single PMO and B) when you are in the process of setting up a new PMO (small & medium sized) a pragmatic way to success is to discover these components in your company and bring them together into an overarching framework. Here is my preferred approach:

• Charter for the PMO is issued
• A small "strike team" of 1-3 people discovers and documents the components
• The strike team is empowered to make decisions about the shape & format of these 4 components
• Together, they build your PMO version 0.9
• All the components are brought together into a framework (i.e. an intranet website)
• After about 3-4 weeks of work: The framework is rolled out to the project managers in the company
• Feedback is solicited from the users and implemented
• PMO version 1.0 is released and a culture of continuous improvement is fostered

If this sounds far too simple to you then let me assure you that I have seen it work in exactly this way. You take what you have, bring it together into a single, easy to access framework and you call it your PMO. It's simple, it's brilliant, it works. And I have personally helped clients do it exactly this way.