Head of PMO job description

Project management — Head of PMO
Sets delivery standards and governance across the whole portfolio.

RESPONSIBILITIES
- Set how the organization plans people across projects, and use it to tell leadership which projects cannot be staffed as planned.
- Set how project costs are estimated, approved and controlled across the organization, and stop funding a project whose forecast no longer justifies it.
- Set change control policy and approval limits for the organization, and step in when a baseline has changed so often it no longer means anything.
- Set the approaches the organization offers and the rules for tailoring them, and step in when a method is applied where its conditions do not hold.
- Set the risk approach and risk appetite for projects across the organization, and tell leadership which portfolio risks they are carrying.
- Set how dependencies are recorded and managed across the portfolio, and use them to decide the order in which projects start.

REQUIREMENTS
- Experience at the Program Manager level (level 4 of 5) or equivalent
- Holds Project Management Professional (PMP)

REQUIRED SKILLS
Project Planning
- Scope and Requirements Definition — You can spot a scope statement that will not survive delivery, because it hides an open decision or an unfunded deliverable, and get it rewritten before the plan is baselined.
- Work Breakdown Structure Development — You can review another project manager's breakdown, point to the gaps, overlaps and packages too large to track, and show them how to restructure it.
- Schedule Building and Critical Path Analysis — You can recover a slipped schedule by re-sequencing, overlapping work or cutting scope, and present each option with its cost and risk before one is chosen.
- Resource Planning and Allocation — You can set how the organization plans people across projects, and use it to tell leadership which projects cannot be staffed as planned.
- Project Budgeting and Cost Control — You can set how project costs are estimated, approved and controlled across the organization, and stop funding a project whose forecast no longer justifies it.

Delivery Control
- Progress Tracking and Status Reporting — You can roll status from related projects into one steering report that shows where one slip moves another's date, and challenge a green rating the evidence does not support.
- Change Control and Scope Management — You can set change control policy and approval limits for the organization, and step in when a baseline has changed so often it no longer means anything.
- Delivery Methodology Selection — You can set the approaches the organization offers and the rules for tailoring them, and step in when a method is applied where its conditions do not hold.
- Project Meeting and Workshop Facilitation — You can facilitate a difficult session, such as a re-plan after a major slip, and keep it on decisions rather than blame.
- Project Closure and Lessons Learned — You can close a project early when it no longer makes sense, and make sure its lessons change how the next project is planned.
- Delivery Cadence and Flow — You can clear a blocker that sits with another team, and show the drop in waiting time.

Risk & Governance
- Project Risk and Issue Management — You can set the risk approach and risk appetite for projects across the organization, and tell leadership which portfolio risks they are carrying.
- Cross-Project Dependency Mapping — You can set how dependencies are recorded and managed across the portfolio, and use them to decide the order in which projects start.
- Project Governance and Assurance — You can set the governance framework for all projects in the organization, and keep it light enough that teams follow it instead of working around it.
- Supplier and Contractor Delivery Management — You can manage several suppliers whose work depends on each other, and settle disputes about who is responsible for a delay.
- Deliverable Acceptance and Sign-Off — You can set up acceptance for deliverables with several approvers or an external customer, so sign-off is not held hostage to unrelated issues.

Stakeholders & Teams
- Sponsor and Steering Committee Engagement — You can set how sponsors and steering committees work across the organization, and coach senior sponsors who are not playing their role.
- Project Team Mobilization and Dynamics — You can set how the organization stands up new projects, so each one starts with the people, roles and tools it needs.
- Business Change and Adoption Planning — You can set how the organization plans for business change on projects, and refuse to call a project a success when nobody uses its output.

Portfolio & PMO
- Business Case and Benefits Management — You can set how business cases weigh options and benefits across the portfolio, and use the evidence to change which projects get funded next.
- Portfolio Prioritization and Capacity Balancing — You can run portfolio prioritization for the organization, tie it to strategy and capacity, and hold the line when a stopped project's sponsor pushes back.
- PMO Standards and Tooling — You can set the methods, templates and tools the whole organization uses, and retire standards that add paperwork without improving delivery.

Delivery
- Project Management — You can set the everyday habits for how work is organized and followed up across the organization, and teams you do not lead adopt the routines you introduce.
- Planning & Estimation — You can forecast work and staffing quarters ahead, and set the estimating method other teams use.
- Ownership & Accountability — You can report the organization's most exposed outcomes to its leaders as they stand, including bad news, and answer for them.
- Quality Focus — You can raise the quality bar across the organization by building the tools and habits that make the careful way the easy way.

Craft
- Problem Solving — You can crack problems the organization has repeatedly failed to solve, and your approach becomes how others tackle that whole kind of problem.
- Domain Expertise — You can influence how the field is practiced beyond this organization, and your expertise settles questions that have stood open for years.
- Continuous Learning — You can set what the organization invests its learning time in, and the material and practice you create outlive your involvement.

Communication
- Communication — You can set how the organization communicates by creating the forums and norms that teams use to share information.
- Collaboration — You can remove the barriers that stop teams working together by putting in place routines and forums they use across the organization.
- Writing & Documentation — You can set the writing standard the organization works to, and documents you wrote are still in use long after you have moved on.
- Stakeholder Management — You can represent the organization in its most important relationships and set how it engages with everyone who depends on it.

Leadership
- Leadership — You can set direction for the whole organization, make hard calls under real uncertainty, and carry the decisions nobody else wants to own.
- Mentoring — You can shape how the organization grows its people, and those you developed are themselves named by others as strong in their field.
- Strategic Thinking — You can shape the organization's strategy, and the bets you argued for are visible in where it ended up.

REQUIRED CERTIFICATIONS
- Project Management Professional (PMP) (required from Senior Project Manager)