A practitioner’s guide to establishing and managing a project management office at a South African parastatal.

Abstract: Project management offices (PMOs) are established to support organisations in realising their strategic objectives by aligning project initiatives with organisational goals. This is achieved through standardising their project management (PM) practices, methodologies, tools and techniques. While PMOs can be beneficial, indications are that many organisations struggle to set them up optimally. Consequently, this study investigated the unique challenges encountered when setting up and managing PMOs at South African parastatals, and how those challenges were prioritised and overcome. The study followed an in-depth interview method were qualifying participants were identified and asked to participate in the research. It was found that the people and organisation-related challenges contributed to the six topmost challenges encountered when establishing and managing PMOs at the South African parastatals. In general, the study contributed to the limited body of knowledge relating to the PMO topic in South Africa. Moreover, the study provided an alternative and practical guideline for the PMO establishment and management processes. This will benefit the parastatals with established PMOs as they can utilise the setup model as a guideline to re-engineer their existing PMO processes. In addition, the PMO establishment guideline was developed, especially, for those parastatals without a PMO, but wanting to establish one