Business Environment Interface Concepts

The PMO's "project governance" function demonstrates to business managers across the relevant organization that they retain control and influence over their business objectives and interests. To a large extent, it may even provide the means for business managers to expand their control and influence into the project management environment to ensure that business interests are being achieved. Two primary types of governance are recommended to provide this interface between business managers and the PMO.

The first type of governance is an executive control board. This board comprises representatives of senior management within the relevant organization. For enterprise level PMOs, this board would ideally include the chief executive officer. This board, or possibly a single executive on the board, is the senior manager responsible for the PMO's performance and serves as the approval authority for the PMO's charter. The head of the PMO will normally report to this board or, more specifically, to a designated executive on this board. This business alignment and oversight at the executive level ensures that all important business interests and objectives are conveyed and implemented within the project environment. If project portfolio management has been introduced, this executive control board would be the guiding body for its implementation. To that end, board composition would be the CEO and executives who hold or otherwise influence project portfolio management.

The second type of governance needed may include one or more technical or business advisory committees. In some cases these technical-based and business interest groups already exist within the relevant organization and can be used intact. For example, the PMO may be tasked to introduce a business standard for which an oversight committee has already been established. It can either call on this committee simply to provide established guidance, or it can determine whether committee participation is desirable and feasible and seek to provide PMO representation on the committee. In other cases, the PMO may seek specialized guidance either from business managers, project managers, or technical managers (or some combination of these) to achieve a particular objective. In this case, the PMO would convene the necessary committee to review, guide, and advise in technical and business matters applicable to the project management environment.