How mature is your PMO governance?

• Create one request form with a few required fields: the problem, the expected benefit, a rough cost, the sponsor and the deadline.
• Keep every request in one register, including the ones you turn down, so you can see the real demand.
• Write down who can approve a project at each cost level, and publish it.

• Score every request against the same criteria (strategic fit, value, risk and effort) before it is discussed.
• Require a named sponsor and an approved charter before any work or spending starts.
• Record every approval with the name, the date and any conditions.

• Review the whole portfolio on a fixed cycle, and re-prioritise when strategy or capacity changes.
• Compare business cases with actual results, and adjust your scoring criteria.

How maham+ supports this: Projects link to strategic goals on every plan. From Pro M, charters go to the sponsor for approval with a recorded approval history, and the optional ten-stage lifecycle starts each project as a business need that the PMO reviews field by field.

• Agree a simple lifecycle (for example idea, business case, planning, delivery and closure) and use it on every project.
• Name one decider for each gate, and record every decision.
• Start with a short checklist of what must exist before each gate.

• Make "stop" and "return for rework" normal gate outcomes, with the reason recorded.
• Scale the lifecycle: fewer gates for small projects, all of them for large ones.
• Do not close a project until the handover is accepted and the lessons are recorded.

• Track how long projects wait at each gate, and remove the bottlenecks.
• Feed lessons learned back into the lifecycle and the templates every year.

How maham+ supports this: From Pro M, an optional ten-stage lifecycle with a named decider at each gate, supporting documents at each stage, and a closure gate that stays locked until every promised benefit has been assessed. The Stage-Gate Throughput & Cycle Time report shows where records wait.

• Introduce a one-page change request for any change to scope, schedule or budget.
• Start a risk register on every project, with an owner and a next action for each risk.
• Keep a decision log: what was decided, by whom and when.

• Assess each change for schedule, cost, scope and risk, with the teams it affects, before it is decided.
• Set written thresholds for who approves which change (the project manager, the sponsor or a change board).
• Review each project's risks on a fixed cycle, and roll the top ones up to the portfolio.

• Analyse why changes happen, and use what you learn to improve estimating and planning.
• Track how long change decisions take, and set targets for them.

How maham+ supports this: A risk register and a risk dashboard on every plan. With the lifecycle switched on (Pro M and up), every project gets a six-stage change-request workflow with impact assessments, a PMO review and a recorded decision, including change advisory board (CAB) decisions. The RAID & Decision Log report brings these records together.

• Give every project an approved budget, and record it as the baseline.
• Record actual costs and commitments (contracts and purchase orders) for each project at least monthly.
• Require a second person to approve every payment.

• Require approval for any change to the budget baseline, and keep the history.
• Define each benefit with a measure, a starting value, a target, a date and an owner.
• Report a forecast cost at completion, not only the spend to date.

• Measure benefits against their targets after delivery, and do not close a project until they are assessed or an owner is named.
• Use the benefits you actually achieved to calibrate future business cases.

How maham+ supports this: Project budgets with a baseline whose changes need approval, contracts and purchase orders with the payments drawn against them, and optional maker-checker approval of payments. Reports include Earned Value and Portfolio Financial Position, and, with the lifecycle, Benefits Realisation & KPI Achievement.

• Agree one status report template (status, progress, risks and next steps) and a fixed reporting cycle.
• Keep one list of all active projects with their owner, stage, status and budget.
• Record approvals in one central place, not only in email.

• Follow up late status reports in every cycle.
• Build the portfolio view from project data rather than hand-made slides.
• Compare the reported status with schedule and cost data to catch over-optimism.

• Measure the PMO process itself: approval turnaround, late reports and incomplete records.
• Be ready to give an auditor every decision for a project or a period in one pack.

How maham+ supports this: Role dashboards and an audit log on every plan, and up to 36 reports in Arabic and English as PDF, Excel or CSV, including Approval Turnaround & SLA and the Audit Evidence Pack. With the lifecycle, status reports run on a set cycle, late ones are flagged to the PMO, and Reported vs Computed Health shows where they disagree with the data.