Transformation and Project Management survey

Transformation Offices - Catalysts of long-term value creation

Value delivery is revolutionising how we envision success, impact and transformation. Successful transformations are no longer solely focused on a narrow scope of schedule and budget, but go beyond it to deliver value to people, achieving sustained outcomes first. Traditional Project Management Offices (PMOs) and/or Portfolio Management Offices (PfMOs) are evolving to become catalysts for this long-term value creation. They are now responsible for realising strategy and channelling the flow of value from investment to clients, stakeholders and the broader society. To highlight their focus on strategy and value delivery, these evolved support offices are often referred to as Transformation Management Offices or in short Transformation Offices (TOs).

There is an increasing demand in the Middle East for faster transformation while ensuring positive outcomes for clients and society. In this dynamic environment, value delivery is emerging as a key work practice to help manage complexity and optimise resource utilisation to deliver on key outcomes. This was also highlighted in the 2022 PwC Middle East Capital Projects and Infrastructure survey, which revealed the need for organisations to take advantage of new skills and work practices to keep up with demand. The role of modern transformation offices has continued to evolve to not only support aligning the CEO’s strategic objectives to on-the-ground delivery; but to also actively support and guide the organisation through a cultural shift to a value-delivery mindset.

To understand how the most successful TOs are helping their organisations embrace value and outcome-based practices, PwC Middle East and PMI collaborated on the survey, which PwC used as the basis for this report focused on value delivery in the Middle East. This has revealed that TOs that are highly mature in value-delivery are instrumental in delivering better outcomes for their organisations. These ‘top-tier’ TOs have strong value-focused cultures, clearly defined outcome-based goals and are much further along than other organisations in implementing value and outcome-based approaches, such as benefits realisation management.

Key findings

73% of the top-tier TOs have a formal role in aligning value delivered by projects and transformation with the organisation's critical strategic and change goals (compared to 50% of all other organisations).

86% of the top-tier TOs prioritise interpersonal skills in project and TO staff all the time, such as communication and collaborative leadership (compared to 28% of all other organisations).

75% of the top-tier strongly agree that the C-suite in their organisation appreciates the role of the TO and considers it a strategic partner (compared to just 27% of all other organisations).

This report, first in the Transformation and Project Management 2024 series, focuses on value delivery in the Middle East. It reveals why value-focused support offices, such as TOs, are a key differentiating factor between the most successful organisations and the rest of the market. It explores the key roles and characteristics of the top-tier TOs that organisations should seek to emulate to develop and mature their own offices. The report covers: