Why Your PMO Structure Might Be Failing You—And What to Do About It

Here’s a baseline structure that I recommend to most PMOs—a flexible, modular setup you can tailor to your reality. It's aligned to the key stages of the portfolio management lifecycle: Planning, Delivery, and Benefits Realization.

1. Portfolio Planning: Intake, Prioritization & Governance

• Portfolio Manager: Aligns the project pipeline to strategy, manages resource allocation, and supports portfolio prioritization.
• Demand Analyst: Manages project intake, supports business case development, and ensures requests are aligned with strategic goals. 
• PMO Director/Manager: Owns the PMO strategy and governance standards; ensures that planning decisions are grounded in executive priorities. 

• PMO Analyst (optional): Assists with maintaining governance frameworks, reporting standards, and performance baselines. 

  This layer ensures your PMO is strategic from the outset. It turns noisy demand into a prioritized, value-driven portfolio. 

Quick Win: Introduce a lightweight intake process and a scoring rubric to assess project alignment and value. 

2. Portfolio Delivery: Project and Program Execution

• Project/Program Managers: Lead execution and manage delivery of key initiatives across the portfolio. 
• Scrum Masters/Agile Coaches: Foster agility and delivery cadence in organizations using hybrid or agile approaches. 
• Project Coordinators: Provide essential support with logistics, documentation, and meeting management to keep delivery smooth. 

These are your "doers." When well-supported, they drive progress. When overburdened, delivery slows and risks rise. 

In addition to ensuring the day-to-day execution of initiatives, PMO Leadership plays a crucial role in portfolio oversight during this phase. The PMO Director or senior governance lead should regularly review the health and alignment of the active portfolio with the executive team. These reviews ensure that the portfolio remains connected to business strategy and that in-flight projects or programs are progressing toward expected benefits. 

These conversations should be candid. Projects that are no longer expected to deliver their intended value must be reevaluated—and if needed, stopped—to avoid further sunk cost and opportunity loss. A disciplined delivery phase includes not only doing the work, but having the courage to question whether the work still matters. 

Audit Tip: If PMs are managing more than 3 active projects or spending over 20% of time on admin, consider adding support roles. 

3. Benefits Realization: Outcome Tracking and Cross-Functional Collaboration 

• PMO Analyst (or dedicated role): Supports tracking and reporting on benefit realization based on inputs from cross-functional teams. 

Benefits realization is not the responsibility of the PMO alone. It is a cross-functional effort requiring collaboration with multiple departments: 

• Finance provides visibility into revenue growth, cost savings, and return on investment. 
• Operations can speak to efficiencies gained through process improvements. 
• Change Management teams report on staff and customer adoption, satisfaction, and behavioral shifts. 
• Business Owners validate whether the delivered solution met their intended outcomes. 

The PMO’s role is to facilitate and support this process by establishing clear measurement frameworks, ensuring post-implementation reviews take place, and maintaining accountability to originally stated benefits. 

Next Step: Partner with key departments to define benefit indicators at the planning stage and revisit them post-implementation as part of a structured benefits realization review process. 

The Change Journey: Lessons from the Field

Wins: 

• PMOs with this structure cut delivery time by 20–40% 
• Stakeholders reported greater satisfaction and confidence 
• Misaligned projects were identified earlier and deprioritized 

Challenges: 

• Functional managers sometimes resist a more structured PMO 
• Without early buy-in, teams may see PMOs as blockers 

The key: pair structural change with open communication. Bring people into the conversation early. 

Make It Yours: Right-Sizing for Your Context 

Don’t copy-paste this model. Instead, use it as a canvas: 

• Small PMOs (≤5 people): Combine roles (e.g., PM who manages reporting) 
• Large PMOs (10+): Specialize and embed teams by business unit 
• Agile-heavy orgs: Expand scrum masters and agile coaches, reduce coordinators 

Action Step: Hold a workshop with your PMO and key stakeholders. Map your current state. Identify overloads. Redesign together. 

Budget Battles and Business Cases  

I’ve seen great PMO designs die on the vine because they weren’t justified. Want funding for new roles? Connect structure to outcomes: 

• Time saved 
• Projects delivered faster 
• Executive visibility improved 

Build a simple slide linking roles to benefits. Show how 1 coordinator = 30% more PM capacity. That’s the language decision-makers speak. 

Navigating the People Side 

 Change is personal. People will wonder: Am I losing my role? Will I report to someone new? 

Bring them in early. One PMO I coached created a joint task force of team members to co-design the structure. Their ideas improved the plan. And when it launched, they owned it. 

When people feel heard, they become advocates—not adversaries. 

Use storytelling. Acknowledge the emotional toll of change. And celebrate early wins. 

A Final Word: You Don’t Need a Bigger Team—You Need the Right Team

A great PMO doesn’t report on projects. It shapes which ones get done—and why. It aligns execution with strategy, capacity with demand, and people with purpose. 

That starts with structure. 

If your PMO feels stuck, don’t add more effort. Step back and ask: Do we have the right roles to deliver the value we’re promising? 

We can help you answer that. Our PMO Establishment and Maturity Assessment will evaluate your current structure, uncover bottlenecks, and design a right-sized PMO model for your needs. 

Let’s build a PMO that drives results—not just reports them.