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Recently we are seeing lot of organisations going for PMO/P3O organisation, should P3O (Portfolio, Programme and Project Office) be taken as separate career in itself?

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Yes it can be taken as separate career but that wouldn't be a very popular path. Generally you can think of PMO as a separate team only in big organization and definitely not every one of them.

My guess is among big companies PMO/P3O will be more and more popular but in smaller organization there will be strong move towards agile methods which require much less (if anything) of PMO. And even if they will create some kind of PMO it will likely to be done using their own forces (PMs), which by the way makes a lot of sense. To find a PMO-related job you'll have to look among big organizations.

Personally, I wouldn't think of isolated PMO career but that's just a matter of choice. It is fairly easy to combine PM and PMO experience as these two are pretty aligned and this way you have plenty of options.

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Absolutely yes! The PMO career path is pretty well embedded within project management now, we even have a specialist interest group totally dedicated to the PMO called PPSOSIG (ppsosig.co.uk). Generally when organisations are looking for project support people / project co-ordinators / PMO analysts etc, they're totally turned off by the idea of a project manager applying for the position. This is because I believe the two jobs actually require a very different mindset. PMO and P3O work is very process, givernance, and reporting based, therefore analytical skills are particularly important. You cal also take a look at just how diverse the types of roles are within the PMO/P3O space http://www.arraspeople.co.uk/project_office_support.html

Thanks Lindsay

www.arraspeople.co.uk

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