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Top1. Introduction
A project management office (PMO) is a group or a department that supports project management within an organization (Darling & Whitty, 2016). The PMO may operate at a low level in the organization, or it may report to higher levels (Hobbs & Aubry, 2010). A PMO can offer a variety of services, and the literature proposes different models for PMOs (see e.g. Monteiro et al., 2016). The PMO tasks include activities such as defining and maintaining methods and tools for project management, optimizing project resource usage, providing training, supporting and guiding ongoing projects, controlling project progress by monitoring and reporting, and maintaining the repository of project documentation (Dai & Wells, 2004; Hobbs & Aubry, 2010). The mandate and the tasks the PMOs offer differ as widely as the industries and organizations that host them (Darling & Whitty, 2016).
Despite recognition of the importance of PMOs as an organizations’ renewal function within the organization associated with organizational value creation and competitiveness (Artto et al., 2011; Hurt & Thomas, 2009) the PMOs face everyday challenges such as to meet senior management’s high expectations of organization value creation (Aubry et al., 2010). One explanation for the PMOs’ challenges is that PMOs are not sensitive enough to operational environment dynamics (Hobbs & Aubry, 2008; Müller et al., 2013; Tsaturyan & Müller, 2015). Conversely, those PMOs that can renew their roles and processes in response to environmental changes will increase their likelihood of success.
Previous studies of PMOs reveal wide variation between PMOs and their role in organization adding organization value such developing project competences and improving project performance (e.g., Aubry & Hobbs, 2011; Dai & Wells, 2004; Liu & Yetton, 2007; Ward & Daniel, 2013). Recently, PMO research has emphasized an approach where PMOs’ act as an organization function integrated into the operational context (Aubry et al., 2011; Aubry, 2015). However, there is little empirical evidence for how PMOs adapt to the context as a system contribution organization value. To study the PMO value creation, we raise the following research questions: Which PMO roles are associated with organizational value creation and does the PMO environment turbulence affect the value creation processes?