What PMOs Must Give Up to Survive AI Transformation
This article was adapted by The PMO's Strategic Role in Digital Transformation episode on the DPM podcast.
Strategic Maturity: Most PMOs still struggle to prove value, limiting their ability to guide enterprise-wide transformation.
Early Involvement: PMOs should enter digital transformation at strategy stage to manage risks, resources, and business-wide operational effects.
Modern Skills: Effective PMO leaders learn quickly, decide decisively, lead without recognition, and connect data with business priorities.
Unlearning: PMOs must replace project-focused language and ownership with executive communication, enablement, and enterprise-level visibility.
Human-Centered AI: Automating broken processes can amplify harm, so PMOs should design AI tools around human needs and judgment.
Digital transformation has entered a new phase, this time led by artificial intelligence. But according to Amireh Amirmazaheri, Founder and CEO of PM Solutions, the real shift isn't happening in the technology — it's happening in the maturity of the PMO itself.
Amirmazaheri has spent more than two decades working across technical, business analyst, program management, and PMO specialist roles. Today she helps enterprises implement, develop, and govern their EPMO systems. Her view is blunt: most PMOs are not yet equipped to lead through this transformation, and the reasons have less to do with AI and more to do with outdated habits the profession needs to unlearn.
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The PMO Is Still Growing Up
Amirmazaheri frames the PMO's evolution the way you'd describe a person's development.
"This person is now in a young age, where they are now understanding their identity. They are understanding what the purpose of this function or this person in the world is, and what type of values this person or authority can add into the body of the business."
That immaturity shows up in the numbers. Citing the PMO Squad 2024 stats, she notes that 64% of PMOs are still unable to demonstrate the value they deliver. The split, in her experience, tracks closely with how the function is positioned:
"I've met several PMO professionals that now are sitting at the executive chairs, but I've also met lots of PMOs that are still thinking that they are the project support function rather than sitting at the business level."
I’ve met several PMO professionals that now are sitting at the executive chairs, but I’ve also met lots of PMOs that are still thinking that they are the project support function, rather than sitting at the business level.
The Digital Transformation Gap
One of the clearest failure patterns Amirmazaheri sees is PMOs being left out of digital transformation programs entirely — sometimes finding out a transformation is underway only once it reaches the delivery or value stage.
"If the PMO is sitting as a strategy partner of the business and if the digital transformation is part of the business' objective, the PMO must be aware when it's happening and not be the subject of the change that the transformation is bringing into the picture. It should be the arm of the business that is enabling this transformation."
She describes the role the PMO should play as a "valet service" for the transformation program:
"You need to step up and define and design a specific PMO. It's kind of like a valet service for that specific digital transformation program. Because that transformation program is touching all parts of the business every in and out of the business, and you are the best function that can enable and mitigate the risk of the success of that program."
Without that involvement, businesses lose visibility into risk, resourcing, and operational impact until problems have already compounded.
Reframing Why Transformation Programs Fail
The commonly cited 70% failure rate for digital transformation programs needs context, according to Amirmazaheri. Failure typically means a program didn't return the promised investment or value — not that nothing happened at all.
To illustrate how PMOs should communicate value, she uses a medical analogy:
"You go to the GP and you are in pain and they ask you the scale of your pain from one to 10, and you're saying, oh, it's eight. And they give you something and ask, what is your pain now? And you say four. So the value that medication brought to you is 50% reduction of the pain."
She points to a real engagement where her team evaluated a $200 million program by laying out the risks in plain terms — including the potential loss of a major revenue channel if the program stalled or failed. Her position is that a PMO cannot guarantee success, but it can materially reduce the odds of failure:
"To say this ship is moving, and it has a probability of failure of 70%. And in that case, you are gonna lose that amount of money."
How much risk a PMO can absorb depends heavily on when it gets involved — and whether it has the specialized capability the specific program requires, distinct from the standing EPMO function.
New Skills for the Modern PMO Leader
Amirmazaheri identifies three core capabilities PMO leaders need going forward:
Learn fast, unlearn fast. Knowledge has a short shelf life in this environment.
"The way that we are moving forward is we need to understand that the thing that I'm learning today might not be available in the next two days. So it's very important that we understand and we are adoptable in terms of our learning."
Make decisions quickly.
Lead without expecting credit. She describes this as an inherent trait of the profession:
"The PMO is the function that never ever gets the credit of the taxes. So you need to understand that if the business is successful, nobody's coming and saying thank you to you. But if they are failing, they say, ah, this PMO doesn't work."
Rather than treating this as a burden, she frames it as servant leadership:
"The true leader is not one that is sitting there and then waiting for a thank you or recognition. Is the one that is enjoying the success as a whole body. When I am working with the client and I see that the client is repeating what I said, or they are actually making the shift away that we are aiming at — this is, for me – yes, I made it happen."
The true leader is not one that is sitting there and then waiting for a thank you or recognition.
Beyond these, she also emphasizes being "digital savvy" — the ability to recognize patterns, work fluently with data, and visualize connections, as more AI agents and digital tools enter the workplace.
What PMOs Need to Unlearn
Amirmazaheri is direct about the habits holding the profession back. The first is language.
"The PMOs must unlearn — I learn how to talk about that project in executive language, how they have to look at the project within the body of the business and bring it to the point that this project is gonna damage our reputation."
The second is ownership over delivery outcomes.
"You are not about the projects. You are about the body of the business. You are not responsible for the success of the project. That responsibility is lying on the project manager and you are there just to enable it and empower the project team to be able to deliver the right team."
The third is the profession's reputation problem. Many organizations avoid the "PMO" label altogether, but Amirmazaheri argues the function matters more than the name:
"Who cares about the name? The main thing is, do you have a function in your business that enables your team to be successful, that enables your business to achieve its objectives, and that is there to provide you visibility of where the business is going as a whole body and identify where the risks are?"
She also pushes back on the assumption that any experienced project manager can simply be reassigned to run a PMO:
"This is a profession that needs its own skillset. And if you see in a profile of a person that person is telling you, I am a project manager, I'm a good project control person, I'm a PMO as well, I'm a risk manager — just think about it. Like how in earth a person can be everything, and you are trusting that."
This is a profession that needs its own skillset.
Making the Leap from PM to PMO
For project managers considering a move into PMO leadership, Amirmazaheri is clear that it requires "de-learning," not a lateral skill transfer.
"You have to start from the beginning and you have to do a lot of de-learning to get yourself up through that profession. So the entry level is not the same."
The differences show up across several dimensions:
Leadership style. "In project management, you are leading with power, but in PMO, you are leading with purpose."
Authority. "In a project you are author, have an authority to approve the reject. In the PMO space, you have the authority to advise and lead and then get into the like a setting it up to get the approval."
Business acumen. A PMO leader needs to understand whether a broader strategy — such as a marketing strategy — is actually achievable given delivery constraints, rather than focusing solely on execution.
Certainty. "In tech, you are dealing with a right or wrong. But in PMO, there is no right or wrong thing. Something that is right is working for one business, and maybe that is not really working for the other business."
In PMO, there is no right or wrong thing. Something that is right is working for one business, and maybe that is not really working for the other business.
AI, Agents, and the Human Factor
Amirmazaheri raises a caution before businesses get too far ahead with agentic AI: many existing human-run processes are already failing the people they're meant to serve, and automating them as-is will only scale the dysfunction.
She illustrates this with a personal experience disputing an insurance claim after a car accident, where a 20-year customer relationship counted for nothing against a rigid contract term she missed by two weeks.
"I just wanted my life to go back to what it was before the collision. And then they started treat me like I'm a pen, not a human. And, this is what a human is doing to a human. This is the process that humans set up.
Her conclusion is that AI ethics conversations mean little if the underlying human processes are already broken:
"If you are defining a process, running a contract, or doing whatever, and you are not thinking about the human factor within it — if you are not looking at it from the human-to-human perspective — it's going to be bad."
She references Yuval Noah Harari's argument that data equals power, alongside Bill Gates' counterpoint that the real power lies in how that data is used — a distinction she sees as central to how PMOs should approach AI adoption.
Her guidance for PMOs building or adopting AI tools: apply the same human-centered thinking to internal tools as to any other stakeholder relationship.
"If you are bringing a PPM tool and you're not thinking about the users who are the everyday user of that tool and what makes them frustrated using that tool, its going to be a bad experience."
The Takeaway
The opportunity in front of PMOs isn't about adopting AI faster than the business next door. It's about maturing into a strategic partner that can speak the language of business impact, take ownership of enablement rather than delivery, and build — or adopt — AI tools that keep human judgment at the center rather than automating flawed processes at scale.
As Amirmazaheri puts it: "When a human is in the picture, there is no black and white. There is no right and wrong. There is a lot of elements around that, so we need to not to forget this."
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