Are you a portfolio manager struggling to monitor your project portfolio and prioritize those with the highest value? Are you overwhelmed by the sheer volume of projects on your plate, unsure of how to identify those that will drive business growth?
In this article, we’ll show you the best PMO templates and tools, giving you everything you need to deliver successful projects and business value.
Here’s what we’ll cover:
- What Is A PMO Template?
- What Are The Benefits Of Using A Good PMO Template?
- PMO Templates to Streamline Your Processes
- PMO Tools To Stay On Top Of Your Portfolio Performance
- Deliver Business Value With Cascade 🚀
What Is A PMO Template?
A PMO template is a pre-built, adaptable framework that simplifies project management processes and ensures project consistency.
An effective PMO template should offer a top-level view of your portfolio health and help a project management office (PMO) efficiently prioritize projects with high ROI potential, make data-driven decisions, and align its projects with the organization's strategic objectives.
Project managers and PMOs can use these templates for various purposes, such as project portfolio planning, risk management, stakeholder management, and progress reporting.
What Are The Benefits Of Using A Good PMO Template?
There are hundreds of “ultimate” PMO and project management templates out there, so it’s important to cut the wheat from the chaff and see what you should get from any template you want.
On a basic level, you want a PMO template that will:
- Increase your PMO’s efficiency by speeding up your planning process and bridging the gap between strategy and execution.
- Enable better alignment and prioritization of PMO initiatives that are aligned with your portfolio and organizational strategy.
But more than that, a great PMO template should also address other key project and portfolio management considerations, such as:
- Standardization of your PMO team's approach to project planning.
- Data integration and a single source of truth to keep all stakeholders aligned.
- Accurate reporting that supports fast and data-driven decision-making.
- Real-time visibility into portfolio performance, empowering you to adapt and mitigate risks proactively.
PMO Templates To Deliver Business Results
As a PMO leader or portfolio manager, you’ll need different templates that fit various needs. We’ve rounded 5 pre-filled templates in Cascade that give you the ability to plan, execute, measure, and adapt your portfolio strategy.
Project Portfolio Strategy Plan Template
If you’re looking for a ready-to-use template to help you manage your project portfolio strategy and planning, then our Project Portfolio Strategy Plan Template is a perfect choice.
This comprehensive template guides the selection, prioritization, and management of projects within an organization's portfolio.
It guarantees that PMO projects are aligned with strategic goals, that the portfolio is balanced and optimized for resource allocation, and that progress is measured and monitored.
✅ Best for: PMO leaders and project managers who need to streamline planning and monitor their project portfolio in one place.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Project Portfolio Strategy Plan Template.
PMO Strategy Template
This PMO Strategy Template is designed to help you focus on the operations and governance of the PMO itself. It helps you streamline your workflows, bolster risk management, and create a PMO that delivers business value.
Use it to define the goals and objectives of your PMO, roles and responsibilities, and the metrics and KPIs that will be used to assess its effectiveness.
By using this template, you can ensure that your PMO is aligned with the organization's overall strategy and is delivering value to stakeholders.
✅ Best for: PMO leaders determined to excel in goal setting and strategic alignment.
👉 Click here to get your FREE PMO Strategy Template.
Simple Project Plan Template
The Simple Project Plan Template is an excellent starting point for introducing a structured approach to planning and tracking individual projects in your PMO.
It helps project managers align with business goals, manage deliverables, and monitor progress. By using it, they can establish clear action items, milestones, and KPIs to ensure timely project execution.
This project planning template is customizable and comes with features to foster team collaboration and improve project visibility.
✅ Best for: Project managers, PMO teams, and organizations who want to enhance their project planning and execution.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Simple Project Plan Template.
Change Management Plan Template
Our Change Management Plan Template offers a structured layout to help teams navigate the change management process more effectively from beginning to end.
Use it to plan, communicate, and execute change management plans in alignment with the organization's broader goals. This template also includes features for tracking progress and monitoring initiatives, assisting in risk mitigation, and maintaining consistent efficiency.
✅ Best for: Project managers and teams focusing on streamlining their change management projects and implementing best practices.
“We are in the middle of a ‘systems transformation’ and have a plethora of projects and initiatives that are critical to our existence. The ability to be able to plan, manage, and track our Strategic Plan using Cascade is mission critical to staying in business over the next 18 months.” - Allison S., Strategic Planning Project Manager, G2
👉 Click here to get your FREE Change Management Plan Template.
Project Resource Plan Template
Efficient resource allocation stands as a pivotal element in project success, and our Project Resource Plan Template serves as a structured guide to simplify this process.
This template plays a key role in outlining the resources required for various projects and guides the allocation or distribution process to align with your goals. Creating a resource plan with this template gives project managers the tools to ensure the right resources are in place, paving the way for timely project completion within budgetary limits.
✅ Best for: Project managers and teams dedicated to optimizing resource planning, ensuring resources are effectively allocated and utilized in harmony with project objectives.
👉 Click here to get your FREE Project Resource Plan Template.
✨More related templates:
- Project Communication Plan Template
- Technical Project Plan Template
- Project Monitoring and Control Plan Template
- Program Management Template
- Project Risk Management Plan Template
PMO Tools To Stay On Top Of Your Portfolio Performance
While traditional PMO tools like spreadsheets, PowerPoint presentations, and project management software can be effective, they often fall short of realizing your organization's full potential. These tools lack high-level visibility, and thus create fragmented teams, misaligned priorities, and hinder decision-making.
That’s where our platform comes in.
Meet Cascade: The Platform That Delivers Complete Visibility Into Your Portfolio
If you want to see everything going on in your portfolio at a glance, then look no further than Cascade as the top solution. Call us biased, but we designed Cascade the way we did for a reason.
We put strategy execution at the center of everything your business does and built the platform to help organizations achieve desired business outcomes.
For PMOs and portfolio managers, Cascade’s capabilities offer a unique approach to project planning and portfolio management. By centralizing all business data in one place, it helps you rise above the noise of day-to-day operations and focus resources on what moves the needle.
Here are some ways that Cascade can help you:
Maximize returns from your portfolio
With its customizable budgeting and resource management features, Cascade helps you maximize investment returns and enhance overall project portfolio efficiencies.
You can use the custom fields to monitor and track crucial success measures like project budgets and expenses.
Collect data from the tools your teams favor
By centralizing and automating your workspace, you can create a single source of truth for your business metrics and PMO KPIs to eliminate context switching.
Cascade integrates with BI tools, task management and project management tools, and collaboration apps like Google Sheets, Salesforce, Jira, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.
Your team members can continue to work with their favorite tools while you automatically fetch updates, data, and progress information.
Sense disruptions sooner with dashboards and roadmaps
With Cascade, you can easily create custom dashboards with widgets that present critical portfolio or individual project data. This will help you quickly identify trends, monitor progress, and prevent derails. With these insights, you and your leadership team can make fast, informed decisions to prioritize investments and drive business growth.
“Tracking our business plan, KPIs, and projects on multiple spreadsheets and Word docs made it a challenge to see the big picture status and to trust that the information was accurate and up to date. We now have full visibility across the board to all of this information and an audit trail to track and understand changes.” - Jennifer L, Manager Project Management Office, G2
Plus, Cascade's Timeline View gives you instant visualization of your action plans, project schedule, and workflows in a Gantt chart. This feature is invaluable for effective portfolio management and prioritization, enabling you to identify risks, dependencies, and gaps before they become a big fire.
“Cascade helps our organization to create strategic and operational goals and manage projects in a streamlined way, and creates visualizations so our whole team can see and understand how our goals fit together and how we are progressing toward goals in real time.” - Shelby T, Director of Strategy & Policy, G2
Build quick status reports for every stakeholder
Cascade's Reports can help you add context to your data and streamline the reporting process.
Use them to generate engaging, customized project status reports for various audiences, and give context: complete with notes, tables, charts, and images. You’ll be able to deliver the right information to the right stakeholders in time and keep everyone in the loop.
Drive strategic alignment between PMO projects and business objectives
Cascade's core features prioritize alignment with business objectives at every stage of execution. This makes it ideal for PMOs who are strategically oriented and focused on impacting business performance.
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📚Recommended read: How successful PMOs deliver value and avoid the hot seat
Deliver Business Value With Cascade 🚀
Spreadsheets, PPTs, and a stack of project management tools will only get you so far.
If you’re looking to boost efficiencies and outcomes and approach your business challenges more strategically, Cascade is the platform to get you where you want to be.
Start running your PMO and project teams like a well-oiled machine by combining one of our templates with Cascade’s powerful capabilities and features.
Sign up for free or book a 1:1 demo to streamline your portfolio management processes, improve communication, and help your project portfolio align with your organization's strategic goals.
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