How important is the PMO at shaping the culture of the project management teams? Should culture be left up to the project manager instead?

The project management office (PMO) cannot be separated from the overall culture of the team and organization. There is only so much a single manager can do to set the cultural tone for the team. The organization invests power within the manager, sets the timetable based upon external pressures, and also is responsible for budgeting and other areas that the manager does not have complete control over, even as a leader. The organization itself also is responsible for how it rewards different behaviors. For example, if an organization places a heavy emphasis on competition and rewards individuals based upon individual efforts, through bonuses and promotions, promoting teamwork will be an uphill struggle for the manager. Similarly, if the organization has a number of layers of bureaucracy that are necessary to pass through to make decisions, encouraging independence and quick thinking can be very difficult for the manager.

In essence, it is impossible...

The organization as a whole must take responsibility for setting a tone and culture in the way it incentivizes certain behaviors, and the ways in which employees are encouraged to maneuver and move their way...…in the past and how the company can engage in continuous monitoring of quality and timetables to do better in the future while making optimal use of resources.

Of course, projects themselves can have specific cultures, based upon team composition and the nature of the project. A project focused upon advertising will have a different character, timetable, and level of interpersonal engagement versus one focused upon improving a facet of IT (Banister-Hazama & Hazama, 2014). However, a single project is only a mosaic in a much larger picture that makes up the dynamic part of the organization, and no project operates in its own microsystem, without input from the entity which has commissioned the project and…