PMO Project Manager On-Boarding Guideline

PMO manager onboarding establishes the foundations of PMO arrangement. We use "basic five" to refer to the PMO project manager onboarding principles. 

1. Document Template 
Every project manager in PMO is required to be familiar with the PMO documentation templates. The most crucial element of this includes: 

• Review the project summary page to comprehend the project scope, roadmap, significant milestones, project team, stakeholders, and the current project status. A project manager needs to make sure the status is up-to-date. 
• Review the business requirement, design, and test document templates to understand content requirements and manage gate review meetings and sign-offs. 

​2. Processing Workflow 
Processing workflow specifies the steps taken during project execution, especially the gate reviews needed to maintain project management quality and governance. 

3. Meeting Guideline
The meeting is a critical and high-cost method in project execution. We required a session to cover PMO project meeting guidelines. 

4. Tools 
PMO requires all project managers to use tools recommended by the PMO office, including project management (Wrike), content collaboration (Quip/Box), communication (Slack), Agile board (JIRA), and know how these tools are worked together to support projects execution. PMO usually outlines the relationship and role of these tools to ensure proper understanding. Training the trainers is suggested so that their peers can provide mentoring assistance when a new PM joins the team. 

5. Governance 
PMO governance ensures consistent quality across all programs and over time. The requirements could include the following:

• Invite the PMO leader as optional to all your customer meetings, project gate review meetings, weekly project status meeting, and monthly project review meetings. As discussed in the meeting guideline, all these meetings require meeting minutes. The PMO leader reviews quality and assesses project risk by reading the meeting minutes and communications. 
• CC the PMO leader to business communications, escalations, and announcements. The goal is the same, ensuring the PMO leader can clearly backtrack the progress in project execution to assess risk and provide suggestions. 
• PMO reviews with project managers in PMO review meetings to going through weekly management reports and monthly project reviews. The weekly review focuses on status and risk mitigation. The monthly review will request PM to go through the project summary page outlining the project scope, roadmap, major milestone, the current project status, team, stakeholders, project current situation, and risk mitigation. 

In practice, we require every project manager in the PMO to go through this and be able to schedule 30min meeting with PMO leaders to confirm completely understand everything before starting full speed in the management project. ​