Managing projects: the role of a project support office

Abstract

The management of project work is an increasing challenge to most organisations. Projects are becoming the fundamental internal building blocks that organisation and business entities use to satisfy their missions, strategies and outputs. Project management, as a management discipline, is not generally understood nor is it commonly practised at strategic level by public sector organisations that commonly handle a mix of project work and non-project work. This paper explains the increasing recognition of projects as vehicles for creating internal change alongside, in the public sector, the provision of new products to satisfy social need. The paper also introduces the concept of the project support office. This type of support facility offers a visible entity for organisational reform and a means to establish a balanced working ethos between project work and, the often predominant, non-project work. Although project support facilities have been established in some organisations, their benefits are anecdotal and little information has been published that would clearly confirm the advantages. Launching a research programme that would investigate project delivery performance by organisations with such facilities is thus a matter of great importance and urgency.