Head of PMO

Role Overview

Head of PMO at webook.com, Saudi Arabia's #1 event ticketing and experience booking platform. The Head of PMO directly leads the Project Manager team within the Business Solutions Department and is accountable for portfolio governance, delivery compliance, and PMO framework maturity across all concurrent projects.

Role Purpose

The Head of PMO sets the delivery standard, coaches the PM team to that standard, and governs how every project is initiated, run, escalated, and closed. This role combines people leadership with structural PMO ownership, building the Center of Excellence, driving standardised controls, and producing executive-ready reporting that gives the Director and CCO full portfolio visibility. A core outcome is ensuring projects consistently meet or outperform pre-estimated budgets through baseline discipline, change control enforcement, and early financial intervention.

Key Responsibilities

PM Team Leadership & Performance Management

• Directly manage the Business Solutions Department Project Manager team.
• Set performance expectations and conduct regular 1:1s with all Project Managers.
• Deliver performance reviews and support professional development for the PM team.
• Assign and balance project workload across the PM team based on complexity, capacity, and growth objectives.
• Ensure no Project Manager is over-extended and every project has appropriate coverage.
• Coach Project Managers on methodology, stakeholder management, scope control, and delivery discipline.
• Raise the standard of craft, not just compliance, across the team.
• Onboard new Project Managers into the Business Solutions Department delivery model.
• Communicate governance expectations, tooling, reporting cadence, and stakeholder engagement standards to new hires.
• Act as the first escalation point for Project Manager-level issues.
• Unblock delivery problems and mediate stakeholder conflicts.
• Provide senior judgment on complex scope or schedule decisions.

PMO Governance & Delivery Assurance

• Own and enforce the end-to-end PMO governance model, including stage gates (G0–G5).
• Establish minimum project artifacts, Director approval workflows, and escalation paths.
• Run delivery assurance reviews including health checks, compliance audits, and quality checkpoints.
• Drive corrective actions where projects deviate from standards.
• Ensure consistent application of governance across all project archetypes (white-label, grey-label, integration, hybrid).
• Keep controls pragmatic and execution-friendly.
• Chair the Change Control Board for intake, impact assessment, approval or rejection, and re-baselining.
• Communicate change decisions to all affected stakeholders.

PMO Framework Ownership & Continuous Improvement

• Maintain and continuously optimise the Business Solutions Department PMO framework.
• Own project lifecycle, standards, templates, toolkits, and playbooks as the single source of truth for delivery operations.
• Identify and eliminate systemic delivery breakdowns including scope creep patterns, late feasibility discovery, and rework loops.
• Eliminate weak sign-off cultures.
• Operate with a Center of Excellence mindset.
• Codify lessons learned and best practices across the delivery team.
• Continuously raise Project Manager methodology maturity.
• Maintain Project Manager onboarding documentation and standards.
• Reduce time-to-productivity for new Project Managers and eliminate methodology drift.

Portfolio Reporting & Executive Visibility

• Own the portfolio reporting cadence and outputs.
• Deliver weekly portfolio health reviews and monthly performance packs.
• Produce steering committee materials for the Director and CCO.
• Provide data-backed insights on schedule variance, budget variance, scope volatility, and RAID trends.
• Deliver cross-project dependency visibility.
• Establish and protect a single source of truth for portfolio status.
• Maintain strong data quality and governance traceability across Smartsheet and reporting outputs.
• Design and maintain the portfolio dashboard with real-time RAG status.
• Track milestones, resource utilisation, and financial performance across all concurrent projects.

Budget Performance, Baselines & Financial Controls

• Ensure every project has an approved, documented baseline covering scope, schedule, and budget before execution begins.
• Enforce that no project starts without a signed baseline.
• Monitor cost performance and forecast-to-complete across the portfolio.
• Initiate recovery actions and escalate to the Director when variances exceed defined thresholds.
• Enforce change control discipline so that every scope change is formally assessed for time and cost impact.
• Approve scope changes before implementation begins.
• Improve estimation hygiene and governance controls.
• Enable projects to consistently meet or outperform pre-estimated budgets through reduced rework.
• Tighten change request governance and improve resource utilisation.
• Partner with the Projects Financial Controller (when in post) on invoicing trigger governance.
• Support per-project P&L tracking and commercial change order processes.

RAID, Dependencies & Cross-Project Risk

• Standardise RAID governance across the portfolio.
• Ensure every risk, assumption, issue, and dependency has an owner, a mitigation action, and a measurable closure criterion.
• Surface and manage cross-project dependencies proactively.
• Drive early escalation and resolution before dependencies become delivery blockers.
• Maintain the portfolio-level risk register.
• Escalate strategic risks to the Director before they become crises.
• Run the post-implementation review (PIR) process on every project closeout.
• Embed lessons learned back into the methodology and template library.

Qualifications & Experience

• Bachelor's degree in Business Administration, Engineering, Information Technology, or equivalent (required).
• PMP, PRINCE2 Practitioner, MSP, or MoP certification strongly preferred (one or more).
• Agile certifications such as CSM, PSM, or SAFe are an advantage in hybrid delivery contexts.
• 7+ years in PMO leadership, portfolio governance, delivery assurance, or project controls.
• Minimum of 3 years in a role with direct line management of Project Managers or delivery professionals.
• Proven track record building or significantly improving a PMO framework from near-scratch.
• Ability to articulate what changed, why it changed, and what the measurable outcome was.
• Demonstrated experience governing a portfolio of 8 or more concurrent complex implementations.
• Background in technology, B2B, or professional services environments.
• Strong background in portfolio analytics and performance reporting.
• Proficiency with KPIs, health frameworks, trend analysis, schedule and budget variance, and RAID analytics.
• Experience managing cross-functional stakeholders including Product, Engineering, and commercial teams.
• Experience within a RACI-governed delivery model.
• Preferred: prior experience in a Centre of Excellence, PMO transformation, methodology office, or operational excellence function.

Skills & Competencies

• Project management methodology expertise.
• Stakeholder management and conflict mediation.
• Delivery assurance and compliance auditing.
• Proficiency with Smartsheet (demonstrated).
• Portfolio analytics and business intelligence.
• Executive communication and reporting.
• Budget and cost performance management.
• Change control governance.
• Risk and dependency management.
• Estimation and baseline development.
• Process improvement and continuous optimisation.