Critical Success Factors for Project Management Office: an Insight from Indonesia

1. Introduction & Problem Statement

The paper begins by highlighting the globally low success rate of IT projects, citing the Standish Group's findings that only 39% of projects are successful (on time, on budget, and with required features). A key reason identified for this failure is the weak implementation of project management standards, which heavily relies on the effectiveness of the Project Management Office (PMO).

However, the PMO itself is prone to high failure rates, with references to reports from Gartner, APM, and The Hackett Group indicating that a majority of PMOs fail to deliver value, are considered overhead, or are dissolved within a few years. A preliminary survey with PMI Indonesia Chapter Board members confirmed this issue is also prevalent in Indonesia, prompting the need for this research.

The central research question is: "What factors do mostly affect the success of PMO implementation of IT projects in Indonesia?"

2. Literature Review & Key Concepts

The authors established a theoretical foundation by reviewing existing literature on:

Project Management Office (PMO): Defined as an organizational unit that standardizes processes, manages resources, and provides methodologies and tools to support project managers and achieve project goals.

PMO Success Criteria: These are the *measuresused to gauge PMO success. The compiled list from literature includes:

1. Project Success

2. Stakeholder Satisfaction

3. Alignment with Business Objectives

4. Output Quality

5. PMO Growth and Performance

6. Stability and Control of Process

PMO Success Factors: These are the *elementsthat contribute to achieving the success criteria. The initial list, consolidated from literature, includes:

1. Resource Team: Knowledgeable, skilled, and able to provide added value.

2. Top-Level Management & Stakeholder Support

3. Quality of Leadership within the PMO.

4. Clear Foundation: Having a clear vision, mission, roadmap, standard processes, roles, responsibilities, and organizational structure.

Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP): A quantitative method for multi-criteria decision-making, used to calculate the weight and priority of the identified success criteria and factors.

3. Research Methodology

The study employed a mixed-methods approach:

Qualitative Phase: A literature review and interviews with 8 highly experienced PMO experts from PMI Indonesia were conducted to identify and validate the list of success criteria and factors. All experts had over 20 years of experience and had held senior PMO roles.

Quantitative Phase: The validated lists were used to create an AHP model. Experts performed pairwise comparisons to rank the importance of each criterion and factor relative to others. The final weights were calculated by combining the factors' weights against the criteria.

4. Key Findings and Results

The analysis produced a clear ranking of what matters most for PMO success in the Indonesian context.

A. Ranking of PMO Success Criteria (from highest to lowest priority):

1. Project Success - The primary measure of a PMO's success is the success of the projects it supports.

2. Alignment with Business Objectives - The PMO must ensure projects are in line with the organization's strategic goals.

3. Stakeholder Satisfaction

4. PMO Growth and Performance

5. Stability and Control of Process

6. Output Quality - While important, the technical quality of outputs was ranked as the least critical success criterion.

B. Ranking of PMO Critical Success Factors (CSFs) (from highest to lowest priority):

1. Support from Top-Level Management and Stakeholders - This was identified as the most critical factor for a PMO's success.

2. Having a Clear Foundation - A clear vision, mission, roadmap, standard processes, roles, and organizational structure.

3. Quality of Leadership of the PMO.

4. PMO Resource Team - Having a skilled and knowledgeable team was found to be the least weighted factor, though still essential.

5. Conclusion and Implications

The study concludes that for a PMO in Indonesia (and potentially elsewhere) to be successful, it must:

Focus on enabling project success and ensuring alignment with business objectives, not just on controlling processes or delivering high-quality outputs in isolation.

Prioritize gaining and maintaining strong support from top management and stakeholders above all else. This is more critical than even having a skilled team.

Establish a clear and well-defined foundation (vision, structure, processes) as a prerequisite for effective operation.

The authors suggest that these findings are applicable not only to IT projects but to PMOs across all industries in Indonesia.

Paper source: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8780504