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Office of Information Management

Strategic Projects & Portfolios

Project Management Office

The Strategic Projects and Portfolios division of OIM has established a Project Management Office (PMO), a resource for project managers and other interested staff leading information technology projects. Its primary objective is to provide project management best practices, project transparency, standardization, outreach and consulting services to project managers working on IT projects.

The objectives of the PMO are to:

  • Provide examples, templates and best practices for project documentation.
  • Increase project management skills and usage departmentally and individually through mentoring, educational programs, brown-bags, mini-training sessions, group discussions, study groups, Web pages, and tool kits.
  • Create and report metrics that benefit project management planning and that provide transparency to OIM customers.
  • Implement project portfolio processes and tools.

Strategic Projects

Strategic projects are required to use a minimum set of Project Management processes and documents, and the PMO exerts light oversight throughout the project lifecycle. Strategic projects are those that are:

  • Managed by OIM Strategic Projects and Portfolios unit project managers, or
  • Prioritized and approved by the current IT governance committee, regardless of funding source

Processes and Stage Gates

If you have a project that meets the criteria for this required minimum project lifecycle, the PMO will get in touch with you to help you start to use the templates and to navigate the processes and stage gates.

These tools are optional for all other OIM projects, but project managers are encouraged to use the tools and templates to facilitate the management and implementation of projects.

The PMO is committed to following Project Management Institute (PMI) methodology. In addition, PMO efforts are aligned internally with partner UW Technology and externally with the State of Washington’s Department of Information Services project management framework.

The entire set of tools is available in the Project Management Portal (PM Portal). The PM Portal is intended as a guideline for management of projects of all sizes.

Portfolio Management

A portfolio is a collection of projects, programs, and other work that is grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet strategic business objectives. The PMO is responsible for the centralized and coordinated management of the portfolio of projects that have been approved by the IT governance committee and is also responsible for status reporting of the entire project and program portfolio, including non-strategic OIM projects.

Consulting Services

The PMO team is available to provide on-request consulting services as well as the coordination of occasional presentations on topics of interest. Request consulting services or presentations by sending email to oim-pmo@u.washington.edu.

Contact Information

Contact the PMO at oim-pmo@u.washington.edu for more information regarding PMO services, or if you have a strategic project starting up.