The Effect of Stakeholders’ Satisfaction and Project Management Performance on Transitions in a Project Management Office

Abstract

This paper aims, through a longitudinal case study, to present and analyze the transitions in operational activities and the performance of a Project Management Office (PMO) in a technology-based company. The paper discusses functions, tensions, stakeholders' interfaces, performance and how they drove the major changes faced by the PMO. The changes in the PMO were mainly based on non-planned events rather than in a change of the management process. The results demonstrated that political tensions in the organization, rather than project management performance, explained the PMO transitions. Managers must look for identifying tensions in the project management environment, project performance and stakeholders' satisfaction in order to propose and direct PMO changes and the sustainability of project ongoing bestpractices. This study also contributes to the collection of evidences that corroborate previous literature appointments, as well as to question some results that need to be contextualized according contingencies for avoiding mimicry in the PMO implementation and transformation.

Control of project data and team satisfaction as results of PMO effort in new product development projects

“…According to Tai (2017), PMOs improve new product capabilities such as Product Lifecycle Management. Barbalho et al (2019) point out the impact of teams and other stakeholders on PMO changes, even when there are good performance results. Barbalho (2021) discusses a case of good handling of pressure from project teams regarding PMO structuration in NPD projects.…”

“…One of the main remaining research subjects is PMOs' role as enablers and conductors of organizational change (Bredillet, 2010;Aubry et al, 2014). Moreover, studies analyzed other aspects of the PMO, such as its integrative role in innovative companies (Artto et al, 2011;Barbalho et al, 2019), or in complex product lifecycle processes (Paton and Andrew, 2019), its knowledge broker characteristic (Desouza and Evaristo, 2006;M€ uller et al, 2013a, b;Pemsel and Wiewiora, 2013;Aubry et al, 2011a, b) and its function in project portfolio management (Unger et al, 2012;Taylor et al, 2012;Too and Weaver, 2014;Bredillet et al, 2018a, b) and PM maturity (Khalema et al, 2015;Aubry, 2015;Van Der Linde and Steyn, 2016).…”

“…Andersen et al (2007) identify how the offices act to perform functions with greater complexity, ranging from supporting individual projects to subsidizing portfolio decisions. Pellegrinelli and Garagna (2009) and Barbalho et al (2019) describe cases where PMOs start performing functions later transferred to functional areas such as human resources, finance and production. The profile of relations between PMO functions and the PMO's degree of maturity is also the focus of Hill (2004) and is a piece of evidence found by .…”

Role of Project Planning and Project Manager Competencies on Public Sector Project Success

“…Thus, it may be inferred here that project success has evolved, and different measurement models have been developed that are applicable to different settings of projects, and yet, authors believe further investigation must be conducted to determine the factors that lead to this construct [27,32,44]. This study in turn is a continuation of the ongoing research in the discipline of project management, and will provide insights related to project success.…”

“…The items of this section were mainly adapted with minor modifications from Refs. [44,56,88]. Moreover, Section 3 of the questionnaire consisted of questions that measured the project manager's competencies.…”