State of the PMO Research Webinar – Your Questions, Answered: Part 1

October 27, 2022 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

If you asked a question after our recent webinar examining the qualities of high-performing PMOs, the answer may be here!  We had four questions that we did not have time to answer during the event: I’ll be responding to one about governmental agencies in the study today, and then one each week for the next three weeks.

We also asked some poll questions during the webinar, and I blogged about some of the data we collected from those in last week’s blog, “Will A.I. Kill the PMO?” Check out a few thoughts about PMO maturity, service span, and the centralization of resource management here.

Now, for your questions:

Q: Have you evaluated and benchmarked public utilities or municipal/county governments, specifically regarding capital improvements programs/portfolios?

A: Yes, all our studies ask participants to indicate their industry sector and we frequently do have roughly 10% of the study group from the sector we call Public Administration. Because they are a subset of respondents, we don’t typically craft questions specifically aimed at them.  However, I can say that the trend over the history of the State of the PMO study is for more and more Public Administration PMOs to participate, and their performance results have improved markedly over the 22-year span of this study. A few data points of interest:

• 81% of Public Admin organizations say they focus on agile methodologies—the highest of all industries in the study
• The PMO staff of the Public Admin organizations is the most experienced of all industries in the study, with an average of 12 years of experience.
• 14% of these organizations scored as high performers, on par with the Professional and Technical Services sector.  (That’s not bad! For comparison, the two organizations with the highest percentage of high performing PMOs, Healthcare and Financial Services, tied at 24%.)
• About a third of Public Admin organizations in the study say they have Enterprise PMOs, which puts them on par with top-performing industry sectors like Healthcare.

As to your question about capital projects, when I look at the budget for projects supported by the PMO in this year’s group of Public Admin organizations, it seems quite low at US $5 million. (By comparison, this figure is US$350M for Energy and Utility firms). It may be that the particular agencies that responded this year do not manage large capital projects. It may also be that, for example, a municipal utility would have to decide whether to respond as Public or Utility … and choose Utility as being perhaps closer to their business model.

Interesting question! This is the kind of thing I like to ask about in my qualitative research interviews with survey respondents. Unfortunately, this year, none of the individuals that responded to my requests for interviews worked in these two sectors. I'd be curious to hear from readers who fit this profile.

Next week: tune in to find out more about The State of the PMO and Agile … or agile, as the case may be.

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About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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