1. What is the purpose and mission of a PMO?
As according to the AtekPC Project Management Office case, the purpose1 of a PMO is to fulfill the need for greater discipline in managing IT projects. Moreover, it establishes or enhances project management skills, process, and governance structures within an organization (Applegate Pg. 462). The director of Application Development, Richard Steinberg, described AtekPC’s PMO’s purpose as a “methodology” for managing projects with standardized practices. As stated within the case, the main purpose of the PMO is to provide standardization in managing projects of large, complex scales as well as gain improvements in planning and performance of initiatives (Applegate Pg. 465). The case generalizes …show more content…

(Applegate PG. 471).
Aanother obstacle would be that resources are scarce. Numerous times, when discussing the responsibilities of the PMO project, John Strider iterated that the PMO was actually limited as to its capabilities due to a lack of recourses. Even though the PMO’s responsibilities were expanding to managing continuous stream projects and archiving project knowledge, PMO Director Mark Nelson stated that without additional resources they would be impossible to fulfill in the short run (Applegate Pg. 461). Furthermore, he recognized that the demand for resources was high within the organization, and the PMO would have to prove its value to gain those resources (Applegate Pg. 470).
These resource issues stem from another issue in implementing the PMO. The company was leaning from a heavy or light implementation, and there was lack of a consensus among senior management concerning the degree to which the PMO was integral to change the process in which the company did business. With no evidence of value for the PMO, strider thought it was too early to apply that formal authority process. The new formal process would make the customers prioritize projects and make tough choices and tradeoffs, so there was uncertainty in whether the customers would buy-in and adapt to this new formal process (Applegate Pg. 472). 3. What structures and governance mechanisms are critical to effective PMO implementation?
John Strider was