Implementing a PMO: +40% in efficiency

The situation

A manufacturing company of 200 employees was running 15 projects at once. Only 30% of them were delivered on schedule. Rework drove delays and budget overruns. In meetings, departments blamed one another, yet no one had the full picture of what was happening.

Diagnosis and approach

The diagnostic exposed systemic breakdowns: there was no single tool — each department worked in its own system; requirements went unaligned; lines of responsibility blurred; and no one managed resources centrally.

We proposed creating a PMO — a project office that would bring the management of every project into a single point and set common standards of work.

The solution

Choosing the tool

We settled on Microsoft Project, linked to the Excel the team already knew, to make adoption easier. Every project was run in a single format.

Standard processes

For different project types we built templates around a shared logic: initiation → planning → execution → monitoring → closure. Each stage had built-in checks and approval gates.

Weekly syncs

Every Monday the project managers meet for 30 minutes: they walk through the status of each project, surface risks, and decide where additional resources are needed. Everyone at the table sees the same picture.

Centralized resource management

We set up a resource registry: the workload of every employee is now visible, and people can be reassigned between projects quickly.

The result

Over 3 months the share of projects delivered on time rose from 30% to 70%. The average schedule variance fell from 3 months to 2.5 weeks per project. Delivery speed increased 1.7 times. The company saved roughly ₽40M a year — less rework, tighter organization. Conflicts between departments dropped 60%, thanks to transparency and a shared understanding of project status.