Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme, Sixth Edition

Project Office Structure

It is a common practice in organizations to establish a Project Office (PO) to manage large or mission-critical projects. Such a structure is temporary and exists only to serve the needs of large or mission-critical projects. Some organizations will even establish a PO whenever the team size reaches a certain number (for example, 30 is the rule used by one of my clients). The PO is just another layer of management, to whom the individual project managers report. The PO provides general management support, coordination, and basic administrative services to each of the project managers.

A Project Office (PO) is a temporary management structure established to coordinate and support the work of several independent teams who are concurrently working on the same single project that has task dependencies across the team structure.

Do not confuse a Project Office (PO) with a Project Management Office (PMO) or Project Support Office (PSO). PMOs and PSOs are permanent organizational structures that support the needs of all projects of a certain type.

First note that the PO is a temporary structure. It is managed by a program manager and exists only to serve the needs of the individual teams who are working on the same project. Once the project is complete, the ...