There are many types of industries and organizations. They all share one thing: project delivery. To make a profit, sustain their businesses, and grow, organizations must initiate, manage, control, and finish projects. The Project Management Office is the brain behind project delivery. Project Management Office (also known as PMO) is an organization’s brain. It will contain several project managers, project professionals or other project delivery personnel to ensure that projects are completed successfully.
About Project Management Office
There are two types of PMO structures: projectized and functional.
PMO can be divided into different roles, such as Project Managers and Controllers, or Assistants.
PMO Directors, PMO Managers or Project Management Officers are the leaders of the PMO
The Project Management Office is responsible for ensuring project delivery success in many companies.
A PMO’s success depends on its project managers being competent, their project team being competent, project planning and risk anticipation, proactive project management, project cost control, project reward, and preventing project cost overruns.

This post will cover different aspects of a Project Management Office. Learn more about the Head of Project Management Offices in our post on Project Management Officer.
Different Project Management Office Structures
A project management office is the backbone of project management success. The office offers many services to both the project and the organization. The project management office can be either functional or project-oriented depending on the organization’s needs.
Functional PMOs are based on different functions within an organization, such as sales, marketing, IT, engineer, etc. The Projectized PMO, on the other hand, is based around projects. The organization can then adapt to its own dynamics once the PMO structure has been set up as either Functional or Projectized. Each PMO structure defines the roles, responsibilities and work environment that are necessary for its day-to-day work.
Below, we will detail both PMO structures.
Functional Project Management Office
This is the most popular PMO structure used by organizations. Functional PMO has functional roles, e.g. Engineers, marketers, and developers all work in their respective departments, e.g. Marketing, IT, etc. These roles require a high level of skill. Because the roles are organized by their skill sets, they can concentrate their collective energies on specific tasks. Functional roles are expected to perform well and produce top-notch results.
Each function has a project manager who manages the functional resources. The PMO assigns the project managers to each function. Functional resources report to their line managers or functional managers.
There could be challenges because the functions are managed by their own managers, and no one centrally controls them. There would be no inter-departmental communication, for example. If multiple departments are working on the same project together, there may be different expectations from each functional section. This could lead to problems down the line. This structure has many advantages, including consistency in work, high productivity, and excellent cooperation between employees.
Projectized Project Management Office
This type of contract is more common. The project management office creates the project delivery team and the project manager manages all the resources. The project manager oversees the majority of the organization’s resources. They report directly to the project manager. The project managers are now more powerful and have all the resources they need to complete the project.