A Study of Changes in the Role and Functions of the Bank's Corporate Project Management Office in the Context of Agile Transformation

Popularity of digital transformations and agile methodologies is on the increase, and many organizations are beginning to implement these practices in their activities. This trend did not bypass the financial industry, where banks, leasing, insurance and other companies began to actively modernize, digitalize their processes and shift their focus to customer-oriented development. For such large companies with a complex structure and organization of processes, “flexible” transformation raises the issue of mixing classical and new methodologies. In this regard, the role of the project office becomes especially important both in the process of transformation and after it. PMO becomes an assistant and a driver of changes or remain “overboard”. Therefore, companies at the start of the transformation must determine the scenario for the development of the project office in the new conditions and its role in the transformation process and after it. The aim of this work is to identify changes in the structure and composition of the bank's corporate PMO functions during the process of agile transformation. The object of research is the project management system in the bank, which is in the process of agile transformation. The subject of the study is the change in the functions and role of the corporate project office in the bank, which is in the process of agile transformation. The results of the study of the agile case of bank transformation showed that the role of the corporate project office in combining two methodologies in the company’s activities - traditional and flexible (agile) begins to gradually shift and the focus of the project office also changes. Even taking into account the fact that the organization is still in the process of transformation, we can already say that there is a visible change in the functionality of the corporate PMO, the project management system is being modernized and the role of the project office is changing. To support a successful agile transformation, the project management office is likely to take on a new role and become more flexible, like the whole structure. However, an important point is to fine-tune the situation and needs of a particular organization. It is impossible to equally apply template approaches to transformation for different starting points, internal and external conditions. In this regard, the concept of turning the project office into “flexible” and the concentration of office functions in three main areas was proposed for the bank under study: • Organization of processes • Communication management and knowledge management • Benefit management The author has developed a scheme which is going to help synchronize the transformation of the project office with changes throughout the organization. For this, roadmaps of these two processes with lists of steps were generated and combined. A number of recommendations for transforming organizations were also formulated as a whole in three dimensions: processes, people and technologies.