Project Offices and the Federal Universities: A Study on Project Management in the Context of Higher Education Institutions

Abstract

Project management has a wide field of study, but its implementation in Public Universities is still recent. In order to support project management, as well as to improve the methodology and management tools, this study aimed to identify which are the models of Project Management Offices – PMO’s, existing in Brazilian Federal Universities. From the theoretical review, the office model was chosen by performance level and its attributions. After conducting a mapping based on data from the Ministry of Education and from the Universities websites, the existence of 20 Offices was identified, present in 14 of the 63 Federal Universities in Brazil. It was verified that most of the offices has a more technical than strategic action, being more connected to certain units or areas of the Universities, such as Engineering or Computing. The study provides evidence that most Brazilian Universities still do not use the PMO’s, and demonstrates that they could improve their performance if they adopted these units in their administrative structures, at the operational levels and especially at the strategic level.