The role of the PMO in enforcing and standardizing attendance to the needs of software project teams by project managers

Abstract

Despite their critical role in project success, software project teams (SPTs) remain the most neglected key stakeholder group by software project managers (SPMs) and researchers in the project management field. The needs and interests of SPTs have not received due attention from SPMs. As an attempt to address the neglect of SPTs by SPMs, the authors of this study developed a model aimed at assisting SPMs to pay necessary attention to the needs of their project teams. Key to the function of the model is the project management office (PMO), which is aimed at enforcing and standardising the collection and addressing of SPT members’ views and concerns. The PMO as a custodian of project management practices in an organisation, is responsible for standardising and enforcing project management practices across the enterprise. The purpose of this research study is to explore how the functions of the PMO can be used to operationalise the enforcement, institutionalisation and standardisation of the overall function of the model. Given the practical orientation of this study, pragmatic and interpretive research paradigms were deemed appropriate for application. Using interpretation, various suitable PMO functions as determined from project management literature were used to meet this study’s objective. Future studies should include the validation of the practicality of this paper’s assertion in a real-life project environment.