From the course: Setting Up a PMO

Identify key stakeholders

From the course: Setting Up a PMO

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Identify key stakeholders

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- You're now starting to set up your PMO. Welcome to the first phase where we explore its current state. A PMO should be created to tackle business challenges for your organization. And before figuring out which problems you need to solve, you need to determine who within the organization is facing them. So the first thing to do is to identify your PMO stakeholders. The stakeholders are everyone within and outside your organization that the PMO will report to, work with, or have reporting into. So how do you identify these stakeholders then? When I ask this question to PMO leaders, a lot of them react as if I'm asking them to unravel some ancient cryptic code. Many of them recover from the reaction and respond by saying, "I just know it." That may be a fair response. In some cases, it really might be that simple. For example, if you're setting up an IT PMO, then your stakeholders are probably the CIO, CTO, various IT department heads, and all employees and contractors within IT. Additionally, since IT typically works with other departments within the organization whether it's finance, HR, or legal, their department heads and teams would be your stakeholders as well. But what if some of your stakeholders play multiple roles? Or there might be an odd chance that you might misidentify some key stakeholders. It might be worth it then to follow this four-step process to comprehensively identify all the stakeholders of your PMO. Step one: identify the roles that exist at your organization. Since you're still exploring what your PMO should do, think about all the things that it can't possibly do, from facilitating business strategy to prioritizing the project portfolio to maintaining project delivery discipline and more. List down all the roles at your organization that are related to them. Here's an example of such a list where roles are mapped to different facets of a PMO. Step two: place your PMO within the sphere of influence matrix. This matrix outlines the possibilities in which a PMO could have influence in the company. Now place your PMO in one of the boxes. Is it a number one or a number two or a number eight? So for example, based on what you know, will your PMO be accountable for the IT department within North America? That's box number one. Or the IT, marketing, and finance departments for the organization globally? That's box number eight. Step three: identify roles for every sphere of influence. For every region and department, identify all roles currently present in your organization that could relate to your PMO. If your PMO might be accountable for the IT and marketing departments within the U.S., then your list could look like this. Step four: make it actionable. Remember, you're doing all this work to make sure you ultimately get to ask the right questions from the right stakeholders so that you can determine why your PMO should really exist and the problems it should solve. To make your stakeholders list actionable, add the elements like their name and whether there's a stakeholders you'd like to speak with about their challenges. This upfront effort will help you clearly think about all the questions you would ask each stakeholder you're meeting. Here are a couple of final pointers to round this up. Get a second set of eyes on the stakeholders list to ensure you haven't missed anyone. And finally, don't forget the project managers, coordinators, and others who will actually work directly or indirectly within the PMO. That's it. You're now ready to start brainstorming your questions and mapping them to the relevant stakeholders.

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