The PMO at 20: New Research Findings Released

May 17, 2022 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Hot off the presses! PM Solutions Research has just released the results of our new State of the PMO 2022 study. If you've been following us for a while, you may know that The State of the PMO has been our flagship research, repeated biennially from 2008 through 2016. During that time, we tracked the development of PMOs from isolated departmental-level project offices to strategic partners at the enterprise level, and showed trending towards the use of PMOs throughout the spectrum of industries.

Then, from 2017 through last year, we took a break and looked at the PMO in context, studying its role in:

• Strategy Execution (2017)
• Adaptive and Agile PM (2018)
• The State of Project Management (2020)
• and as a part of "How We Thrived" during the pandemic (2021).

These studies (you can download the executive summaries of all of them from the links above) showed us how the PMO had become the beating heart of the project management ecosystem: a center for project management excellence, but also the manager of portfolios, programs, projects, project managers, and (increasingly) strategies, benefits, and human resources. Now, the 2022 State of the PMO creates a profile of "the high-performing PMO," an organizational center for project management, performance management, change management and people management. A few key points:

• The majority of PMOs now reside at the enterprise level
• The value of the PMO is no longer seriously questioned by others in the organization.
• While the functions of the PMO have proliferated and become more strategic, it operating costs, in most industries, have remained flat.
• Common in larger organizations (roughly 85% have PMOs), PMOs are now being established by small businesses as well.

Check out the executive summary here, and stay tuned for a series of blogs on various aspects of the study, as well as webinars and presentations TBA soon.

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About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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