First Advisor

Plantz-Masters, Shari

College

College for Professional Studies

Degree Name

MS Information Technology Management

School

School of Computer & Information Science

Document Type

Thesis - Open Access

Number of Pages

137 pages

Abstract

The focus of this professional project was to identify the appropriate services for a lightweight project management office (PMO) to implement at a company referred to with the alias Not-For-Profit Organization (NFPO), and then to complete the first phase of this implementation. NFPO had lower project success rates than desired. They wanted to integrate project management practices into their organization in order to be more effective in meeting their mission. In order to determine the best approach to do this, lightweight and heavyweight project management methodologies and PMOs were examined. Based on NFPO's smaller staff size, their culture, managements' desire to keep overhead low, and their low project management maturity state, a lightweight PMO (PMO Lite) with a supportive nature was tailored for NFPO's needs. This paper presents the results of the first phase of the PMO Lite implementation, which was to implement PMO Lite within the IT division. The next phase planned was to implement PMO Lite company-wide. For the first phase a PMO Lite Project Charter was completed. This document defined the goals and objectives, as well as high level responsibilities and resources for the PMO. A primary service of the PMO was to manage a project management methodology. Next, a simple project management methodology was developed to eventually be used organization-wide for all projects. It incorporated Scrum in a separate project management methodology for the IT application development projects. Document templates and a central document repository were created. IT staff were trained on these methodologies. A business case for NFPO's PMO Lite was presented. The early results of the implementation were favorable. They included executive support of the PMO, IT staff trained on the project management methodologies, and the successful completion of two Scrum projects.

Date of Award

Fall 2009

Location (Creation)

Colorado (state); Denver (county); Denver (inhabited place)

Rights Statement

All content in this Collection is owned by and subject to the exclusive control of Regis University and the authors of the materials. It is available only for research purposes and may not be used in violation of copyright laws or for unlawful purposes. The materials may not be downloaded in whole or in part without permission of the copyright holder or as otherwise authorized in the “fair use” standards of the U.S. copyright laws and regulations.

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