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My company is establishing a Project Management Office (PMO). Because we are limited in the number of project managers, we need to carefully design a project intake and qualification process. Anyone have an idea of where to start? We want to be able to demonstrate the value of the PMO, but also want to avoid taking on more than is manageable.

Also, we may expand the number of PM's and as skillsets may vary within the PMO, we'd also like to consider a process that matches skills of the PM with requirements of the project. Thanks.

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  • I'd start by asking your PMs what they do today, then discuss as a group. – Sarov Jun 17 '19 at 13:07
  • Thanks, because we have so few PM's, the process is currently that we take all project requests. We now need a more structured organized process as we'll not be able to operate in the same way going forward. – SMM Jun 17 '19 at 14:32
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Your OP is slightly disturbing and appears to be a tail wagging the dog strategy. You indicate that you need to control the types and numbers of projects based on number and skill set of your PM. It's the other way around. Your projects for the year should dictate what you need by way of PM and should trigger either shedding those you don't need or hiring those you need.

I am assuming that your firm commits some amount of money during your planning process available for projects. You should evaluate your projects during that planning cycle based on the benefits it'll provide to the firm, the costs, and the risks of doing the project. You can create a rather simple scoring method based on those criteria, or a decomposed set of criteria, and then rack and stack the projects. Based on what you can afford, commit to those projects that are on the top. It might be good to reserve some of those budget dollars for projects that bubble up during the year.

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  • Thanks David. Can you clarify on the "risks of doing a project"? Would this be along the lines of consuming too many resources, probability of successful completion, etc? – SMM Jun 18 '19 at 12:35
  • Exactly right. Any type of threat to the project's objectives. It could even be to the business case. For example, a project might be about an ROI on a new product but there might be high risk on that ROI. – David Espina Jun 18 '19 at 13:02

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