The Enterprise Change Office
The Office of Government Commerce (OGC) was a UK government body established in 2000 to promote efficiency and best practices in public sector procurement, project management, and programme management. One of its significant contributions was the development of the P3O® (Portfolio, Programme, and Project Offices) framework, first published in 2008. This framework provides principles and guidance on designing and operating effective support structures for delivering change. P3O® was created in response to the growing need for organisations to align their strategies with execution and to standardise the roles of PMOs across different contexts.
In 2014, the stewardship of the OGC’s best practice portfolio was transferred to AXELOS, a joint venture between the UK Cabinet Office and Capita. AXELOS continues to maintain and publish the official P3O® guidance, with the most recent version being “Portfolio, Programme and Project Offices: P3O® Guidance” (AXELOS, 2013).
The guidance outlines a hierarchy of structures, which is summarised in Exhibit 1. It also notes that “projects” can stand alone and do not need to be part of a “programme”.
The “P” in PMO can mean Portfolio, Programme or Project. A definition for the purposes of this blog for each of the entities is:
However, in practice, organisations may term what are defined as programmes above, as projects. This is particularly the case with major transformation “projects”.
Whilst the definitions above provide some degree of clarity, the same cannot be said as to establishing an overarching description of the role of a PMO.
In some organisations, a Project Management Office may have a wide ranging role operating across the organisation’s portfolio in, for example, setting the standards for project and programme definition and delivery management and governance.
In contrast, the function of what is termed in some organisations as a Programme Management Office, may be limited to a supporting secretariat to the Programme Manager on a single programme.
To differentiate the function proposed in this blog to that of a traditional PMO, the function is called a Change Management Office. The terminology programmes and projects is replaced by the term initiative with the following definitions.
In practice, exact terminology is of less importance than the relevant stakeholders having a complete and common understanding of the terms being applied. One way of achieving this is through an organisational intranet including a glossary of terms and a charter for the functional office.