Abstract:
The competition in the telecom industry has seen an immense rise in the last decade.
Accordingly, the telecom operators have started to revamp their business models, and are
increasingly relying on the attainment of business objectives through the selection/execution of
the right portfolio of projects. A focal element of their strategy to manage this portfolio is to set
up a Project Management Office (PMO). A PMO is defined as a central entity through which the
organizations institutionalize project management. It is considered as a means to an end, rather
than an end itself.
PMOs, being a recent organizational initiative are not only understudied, but also the industry is
quite evenly split on the key attributes of the PMO and their associated roles/ responsibilities.
The problem space gets further worsened to note that there is no industry standard / guidance on
PMOs. The bodies of knowledge are still striving to build consensus in order to develop
standards on PMOs. Despite this dichotomy, PMOs in the organizations have seen a serious
uptake in the last decade. As per survey from Chartered Business Professional, in 2000 47% of
the respondents have implemented a Project Office of any type. While in 2006, this increased to
77% and in 2010, it rose to 84%. This increase in deployment of PMOs is coupled with a larger
mandate, thus trusting PMOs to be plugged into the business; however the telecom operators do
not rightly realize this shift in positioning of the PMO.
The ability of the PMO to mature and influence the bottom line business goal is crucial to sustain
the competitive market position of the Telecom Operator. This research establishes a viable
baseline and analyzes the Influence of PMOs maturity on business success in Telecom Industry.
The basic intent is to explore the current practices of the PMOs in mid eastern
telecommunication sector, analyze them and derive learnings from those successful deployment
of PMOs. Finally incorporating the learnings from those successful PMOs and develop a
roadmap for the successful realization of a mature PMO for Telecom Industry in Pakistan
