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Building Blocks of Project Management

© 2016 PMO Strategies

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Table of Contents Chapter Introduction: The Building Blocks of an Effective and

Sustainable PMO

01. PMO Building Block 1: The Type of PMO for Your

Organization

02. PMO Building Block 2: The Low Down on Methodologies

03. PMO Building Block 3: Which Tools Make a Difference?

04. PMO Building Block 4: The PMO Talent Profile

05. PMO Building Block 5: Successful Change Leadership

06. PMO Building Block 6: Alignment with What Matters


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Introduction:

The Building Blocks of an Effective and

Sustainable PMO


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Great! So, you have been charged with building and running a PMO for

your organization. You’ve got the tools, you know about the best practices, and

you have templates coming out of your ears. Now what? What are the things that

you must do to help your PMO grow into a change

management powerhouse for your company?

In this series of articles, we will explore both the art and

science of what makes PMOs a market differentiator to

strategy realization. Many of us are aware of the fundamental

building blocks necessary to create a successful PMO. The

science of PMO management covers the standards and best practices, as well as,

the tools that must be present at the foundation of a PMO. What many struggle

with, however, is the art of a great PMO. This is where organizational savvy,

strong talent management, and strategic change leadership come into play. These

are the art forms that make a PMO an effective and sustainable entity in any

organization.

This journey will cover those basic building blocks that set the PMO stage

for success; pointing to several of the proven tools and techniques for effective

portfolio, program, and project management. Following that overview, the real


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fun will begin, in exploring the lessons learned from great leaders on the ways to

drive real transformational change through an effective PMO. This is the art of

PMO performance.

The articles will be as follows:

1. Determining the Type of PMO for Your Organization: Identify Your

Organizational Appetite and Needs

2. The Low Down on the Methodologies and Maximizing Your Portfolio

Throughput: What is Implementation Methodology vs. Project Management?

What’s New in Portfolio Level Methodology?

3. Which Tools Make a Difference: Do Some Tools Have a Proven Success Over

Others?

4. The PMO Talent Profile: Why Getting the Right Talent Matters

5. Successful Change Leadership: Creating Change Advocacy in Your Organization

6. Alignment with What Matters: Driving Real Change Across an Enterprise


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Chapter 1:

PMO Building Block 1: The Type of PMO for

Your Organization


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Identify Your Organizational Appetite and Needs

This article will look at a few of the most common mistakes PMO leaders

make when setting up or evolving a PMO.

Mistake #1: Assuming your organization needs a PMO without identifying

the business priorities.

What Works:

The first step is asking yourself a few fundamental questions to determine

where your PMO can provide value. What does your PMO solve? Are leaders

concerned about time to market? Is it brand

and industry reputation? Is technology

costing too much to implement? These

business challenges should be easily

accessible to you by reviewing the mission

and objectives for the organization, and

paying attention to what’s going on around

you. The leaders of the organization, once

they trust you, will tell you what’s really

going on. If it’s a public company, do your

research. You will find someone talking about what is or isn’t working with the

company from the outside, as well as the inside. Chances are high that this is


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what the CEO is thinking about. Find a way to tie what you are doing to solving

those pain points, and you will have a reason why your PMO needs to exist.

Knowing the business challenges is only half of the battle. You can’t ignore

the politics that are circulating at those upper levels. Understanding what

motivates those business leaders will help you secure your PMO’s position. Those

senior leaders are still human and, just like we discuss below regarding the people

within the various levels of the organization, each leader has their own personal

motivators that will color how they see you as either an asset or a threat to their

success. Pay attention to the clues and figure out who you can trust to fill you in

on the way business really operates at that level. Yes, it can be as simple as

learning that they will help you if you make them look good. We may not like it,

but ignoring it can be detrimental to your PMO survival. More on this when we

get to driving real change in the organization and real change leadership in future

articles.

Mistake #2: Spending too little time on the people within the organization,

as advocates for future success.

What Works:

Take the time to get to know the organizational

culture and appetite for a PMO. Every organization has

members that will resent what the PMO represents – more structure and


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oversight to what they do. As will be mentioned many times in this article series,

the first thing you need to do is figure out the three categories of people you

need to identify in an organization – those that love you, those that hate you, and

those that don’t care.

Once you have placed these members into their categories, spend some

time working with them to learn where their pain points are; what they want

from the PMO, and what they fear most. Never start with a hard sell for any of

these categories. You have to start by giving them the solid and honest

impression that you want to solve their challenges, and make life easier for them.

If you can’t provide that, you can’t be successful. Your promoters will lose interest

and your detractors will make your life miserable, all while the indifferent

members go along acting like you don’t exist.

Warning: Those who are indifferent are just as

dangerous as those who are detracting from your

success!

If you’re lucky, the people who don’t want you around can be pulled into

the process to have their voices heard. Keep your enemies close…and talking…to

you, not leadership, about what concerns them. You can do this by inviting them

to participate in an advisory group you create to hear varied opinions. Engage

them to help you identify the problems with the PMO. Then ask them what they

would do to solve those challenges. If you are building or transforming the PMO,


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even better! Those members will get to help with the transformation. Before you

know it, you have turned those detractors into what? Active participants in

helping you build a PMO powerhouse that has a full range of supporters in the

organization. There’s nothing like engaging someone in the process to help them

own the future state of a PMO.

Mistake #3: Deciding what kind of PMO will work for

your organization without doing A LOT of homework.

What Works:

There are many different types of PMO models, each with their own

benefits and weaknesses. Familiarize yourself with the various structures out

there and figure out WHAT you are trying to solve. PMI – http://www.pmi.org and

CEB and http://www.executiveboard.com are great sources for that information.

This should be done before you attempt to decide HOW to build your PMO.

Hopefully, you have figured out the business problems facing your organization,

and have combined that with the knowledge of the organizational appetite and

people readiness from the prior section. From those clues, you can determine

where the center of gravity for change will need to be located.

Is your organization more silo-like, where each business unit runs

independently? If so, your best bet will likely be a decentralized model where

each business unit has its own smaller PMO. In this case, your organization would


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likely still benefit from some standardization of templates, best practices, learning

and development, tools, etc. from a leaner enterprise level PMO.

Do you have major cross functional initiatives taking place that require

coordination across the business units? If so, you may benefit from a centralized

group of strategic change

agents that can run the

programs that cross the

enterprise. In an upcoming

article, I will explore many of

the popular PMO types and the

pros and cons I’ve seen in my

many years of experience

building various PMOs.


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Chapter 2:

Building Block 2: The Low Down on

Methodologies


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Implementation Methodology vs. Project Management / What’s New in Portfolio

Level Methodology?

In my mind, there is a difference between implementation methodology

and project management discipline. They can work together quite seamlessly, but

aren’t the same thing. Looking at the PMI Project Management Body of

Knowledge (PMBOK®), you will see the various “What’s” that need to be

considered as a project manager. Those “What’s” are the knowledge areas, and

are primarily focused on the things the project manager must do, from the

perspective of the project manager. As with any

methodology, you should look at it as a toolbox, with

potential tools that you can pull out to accomplish a

task. You don’t need every tool all of the time.

However, to be successful, you have to know which

tools are at your disposal and when, and how, to use them. As a 10 year PMP, I

can say that I highly recommend becoming familiar with these “What’s” of

portfolio, program, and project management via the PMBOKs.

As far as the “How’s” of getting projects done, there are many different

implementation methodologies you can choose from for your organization.

Implementation methodologies are focused significantly on the building part of a

project. Where the sausage is made, if you will. Agile, Systems Development Life

Cycle (SDLC), Spiral, Waterfall, etc. all look at the roles for each of the players on

the team and how they must all engage for the work to get accomplished. Each of


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these implementation methodologies has strengths and gaps in ability to help you

manage your projects.

As with project management discipline, look at the various implementation

methodologies as options you can choose from to accomplish your priorities.

Some require more rigor and discipline in applying the components than others,

but all are aimed at getting your projects completed, while balancing the triple

constraint.

Now, let’s take this to the entire portfolio level. As PMO leaders, we need

to be mindful that a key factor to our success is being

able to build trust with our business partners. To do

this, we need to build highly reliable techniques for

managing our portfolio of work so that we can deliver

consistently. Doing what you say you are going to do, on a regular

basis, will show your customers and business partners that

they can count on you. It’s that simple.

So, how do you maximize your available resource

capacity and throughput on projects to get to a high quality and

optimally delivered portfolio? To answer this question, let’s look at a

methodology that leverages the pros of a few different implementation

methodologies in a way that creates hyper-productive teams, and significantly

increases your total portfolio success.


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I’ve personally seen the details of this framework, attended the full day

workshop, and feel that this guy is really onto something big. As stated above,

having all of the best tools at your disposal, and knowing when and how to use

them, is one of the top strengths for project managers. Now, take that a step

further. Leverage those components in such a way that your entire portfolio is

optimized and will hit the sweet spot for PMO leaders. You have fully leveraged

the “What’s” and “How’s” to maximize your entire portfolio throughput.

ACCLAIM™ is a portfolio management approach based primarily on Critical

Chain Project Management, with some project-level methods borrowed from

Agile and Lean. It stands for Advanced Critical Chain Lean Agile IT Management.

This methodology takes 6 proven techniques for dramatically improving the

throughput and reliability of IT Project Portfolios, and introduces a 7th technique

that allows both Agile and non-Agile projects to co-exist harmoniously within the

same portfolio. ACCLAIM is focused on addressing the three primary objectives of

any IT PMO:

1) Get more done (improve throughput of project completions)

2) Get it done reliably (minimize risk of project failure)

3) Use the right tool for the job (apply Agile when it makes sense, and other

methods when they make sense)


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Four of the techniques—Project Staggering, Single Tasking, Elimination of

Task-Level Commitments, and Lean—are designed in combination to boost the

throughput of project completions by as much as 8x, while boosting reliability.

Two of the techniques—Project Buffering and Buffer Management—are

designed to maximize the probability that all projects in the portfolio are

completed within the original budget, schedule, and scope.

The last technique—Time-Based Buffering—converts Agile’s scope buffers

into time-based buffers. This offers an “apples-to-apples” view of all project

buffers in the portfolio.

Finding a methodology that works for you is

highly dependent upon your environment, culture,

aptitude of the staff expected to use it, and the

organizational appetite for standardized process.

With that said, there are ways to maximize your

entire portfolio so that your PMO becomes a trusted

partner in delivering the results that the

organizational leaders need.


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Chapter 3:

PMO Building Block 3: Which Tools Make a

Difference?


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Do Some Tools Have a Proven Success Over Others?

The bottom line on tools is this…if you aren’t using it as it was designed

and/or have chosen to customize it so that it barely looks like what you started

with, you are slowly going to degrade the functionality and usefulness of this tool;

to the point that it will lose the ability to give you good quality information you

can rely on. All of the major tools companies out there claim to solve many of the

basic project management objectives, but for the more advanced users, one tool

isn’t going to be perfect for you no matter how much you customize.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen what can happen when companies look to make

the tool fit their process, instead of considering that the other way around might

actually be more effective. This doesn’t apply just to project/portfolio

management software, as many of you realize. People will take that bright and

shiny tool out of the box, and transform it into something that they swear they

needed in order to get any value from the tool. Then, years go by, and you’ve put

so many customizations on top of the tool that it is barely recognizable as that off

the shelf product you purchased many years prior. The vendor will be telling you

that you can get so many of those customized features in their newer version of

the software. You are finding that you need to put fix on top of fix to get the

software to work the way you had hoped three changes ago. The executives in

your organization don’t see the real business value in the tool (where are their

fancy dashboards with reliable data?). So, you are having a hard time convincing


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them to invest another hefty sum of money in upgrading or replacing the tool.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Assuming you can convince leadership to invest in replacing the tool, or for

those of you that are making the investment for the first time, below are some

recommendations for getting it right.

Your best bet is to start with the best future in mind, not your current state.

What is it that you are hoping to produce as an ultimate outcome of using this

tool? Is your focus resource management? Is it cost management? Is it fancy

dashboards that the executives can use? Figure out what matters to you, as the

owner of the tool, and also to your stakeholders. It is in your best interest to take

the time to figure out what each of your stakeholder groups needs in order to feel

a part of the process and to make sure that they are getting real, tangible value

from the tool. Otherwise, you will have a disaster on your hands when you

implement something (customized or not) that doesn’t meet stakeholder needs.

No one will use it or, if forced, they will find the path of least resistance, which

equals the least amount of valuable information.


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In addition to gathering requirements from stakeholders (Software

Development 101, right?), you also need to take the clean sheet of paper

perspective for your processes. Put aside what your tools or

processes do for you today and think about what you

ultimately want to deliver. Once you’ve done that, you may

realize that your current business processes don’t actually

fit where you are headed with your new set of

requirements. That’s OK. Change can be your friend here. You can either scrap all

of your old processes in favor of your new ones, or take advantage of this

opportunity. Align new business requirements with some of the lean and six

sigma strategies for process improvement applied to your existing processes.

Either way, you are still only looking at requirements and the processes.

However, the tool doesn’t come into the picture just yet. There is a reason for

this. If you engage with vendors before you’ve done your homework, you will

have them all “helping” you define your business processes in a way that suits

their tool, specifically.

Now, I’m not suggesting that you need to get into very specific details of

your processes before tool selection, but you need to know what you want.

Figure that out and then you can be clear with vendors about what you want

when you engage with them. The more you know about what you want as an

outcome, the more the vendor can help you achieve success. The vendor will be

able to tell you how to best achieve your desired outcomes with the tool they are

pitching, They will also be able to make some best practice recommendations to


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your processes to get to the most efficient results. That’s a very different role

than having them define all of your processes for you, some of which will only be

there because that’s how their tool works instead of what you actually need to

run your function.

Upon reaching agreement on the business requirements and business

process, it’s time to start looking at your tool options. Vendors will fall all over

themselves to help you with your project management software needs. There are

the primary companies that create the software, and then there are third party

implementers that will implement the software of your choosing. Your best bet is

to do your research here and look at what other companies of your size are using.

This is easy enough. Google searches and

actual conversations with people will get you

everything you need. There will be many war

stories from companies that have

implemented the software packages or web

based/Saas model tools. Some will be great,

but more will not be so great. Some people will claim that a certain tool is

amazing and others will say that that same tool is horrible. Neither of them is

right and both of them are right. It’s all about the experience that they had in

implementing and using the tool in their organization, how much they customized

the tool, and what they were looking for as outcomes. My experience has been

that those who didn’t follow the suggestions in this article will have the worst

experiences to share with you.


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There is one very important consideration with all of this. You must keep

the people engaged in the process of defining the requirements, and get real

agreement to engage in the use of the tool once it is implemented. The primary

reason that a project management tool is put into place is to help in managing

and leveraging the project data to make decisions. Those reports that you and

your executives want will only be as good as the data put into the tool by the

project resources. Bad data in equals bad data out. Do not underestimate the

time and effort required to educate, train, and build structure around the users of

this tool and how they interact with this tool. This user management process will

be an ongoing communication and training effort that must be planned for when

considering implementing project management software.

One final note…

No tool will be perfect. Pick the one that most closely aligns with your

already defined objectives and key business processes. My advice…use the 80/20

Rule. Expect the tool to meet 80% of your needs through no customization (even

if this means modifying your processes to meet the tool instead of the other way

around) and then look to make modest customizations or find mechanisms

outside of the tool to meet your last 20%. Any more than that and you will be

paying for it for years to come!


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Chapter 4:

PMO Building Block 4: The PMO Talent

Profile


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Why Getting the Right Talent Matters

For the last 14 years, I feel like I have been in constant hiring mode.

Actually, I HAVE been in constant hiring mode. Building, transforming, rescuing,

and running PMOs requires a constant focus on talent management. I constantly

had resumes on my desk and have looked at thousands of resumes and

conducted countless interviews. What I have found in that process is that there

are definitely things to look for in the resume and in those early phone

conversations. But, you have to be able to spend time with this person face to

face to see if they are going to have what it takes to drive real change for you.

So, what characteristics do these super stars have?

First…they usually do have at least one certification. Whether it’s the PMP

or another continuing education certification or degree, I’ve noticed that the

people who are really into the profession, and the kind of people that like to

continue to grow and further their careers, all have some type of designation or

credential. Not only does this show that they have a leaning toward their own

career development and improvement, but it allows your team to have a common

language when they communicate. That saves a lot of time in translating when

you are asking them to share information or help each other with a project. With

that said, that only gets your resume in front of me. It doesn’t determine whether

or not I will hire you. In my book, that’s simply table stakes.


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Certifications matter, but only so much…

So, what does this talent look like? Sure, they have PMPs, and they have

experience managing projects and programs. In order to be competitive and the

kind of person I want to hire, it is necessary that they have sharp communications

skills and the ability to influence anyone to do anything. As silly as it sounds, they

also have to be…well… likable. I’ve seen some of the sharpest minds lose an entire

audience by not being able to reach them on a personal level. Where the rubber

really meets the road is on the soft skills side.

It starts with communications

and expectations management. One of

my super stars was helping me

interview and the candidate asked him

what I was like to work for. He said,

“That’s easy. Just do what you say you

are going to do. Manage her expectations! She’s savvy and will know if you aren’t

being straight with her. Be realistic. Ask for help when you need it, but set the bar

where you think you can reach it. Setting the bar too low is just as bad as setting it

too high.” This is what the right talent knows. Expectations management is, above

all, the best way to manage up. They know they have to keep me engaged and

informed so that I can come to the ready immediately when they need me. My

job is to provide them air cover. The rest of the time, my job is to support them,

be available to brainstorm ideas, and then get out of their way! Good talent needs


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the creative freedom to solve problems and manage the efforts the way they see

fit.

The types of resources you want in your PMO are change agents by

lifestyle, not just job title. These people are the ones that can and do handle

change well, on an ongoing basis. Not just project change, but these people are

continually growing and evolving in their personal lives and know how to “live”

change. They are the ones that have some kind of regular development and

interests outside of work that give them that well rounded, and looking to keep

changing/growing, kind of approach to life. Who better to sit with your customers

and help them live through a change than those that do so continually?

A pattern that has emerged for me in the super star talent is related to the

ability to show empathy. This talent

needs to be able to meet the customer,

client, project team member. It also

means knowing where they are, not

where they’d like them to be. The right

talent inherently knows this and

constantly puts themselves in the shoes

of their stakeholders, addressing their needs before those stakeholders even

realize they have the need. The ability to get into someone’s head and

understand what their motivators are and how you can leverage individual

motivations toward common project goals is truly an art.


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This talent becomes a chameleon of sorts, by remaining flexible to the

different demands of stakeholders. They know who they need to be for each

audience. The executive wants to know the bottom line; the project team wants

to know that they have someone watching their back; the customer wants to

know that they are going to get what was promised. All of this goes into how this

kind of talent will interact with their stakeholders and who to be to whom, and

when. The PMO leader wants to know that the stakeholders are all getting what

they need and that the projects are being delivered. The good ones are going to

have an inherent sense about what needs to get done and how to get it done in a

way that keeps everyone happy and productive.

You have to find them, and then you have to keep

them…happy.

Leverage the super star talent you already have to help

you interview these candidates. Good talent knows good talent when they see it.

And speaking of good talent, make sure you are hiring for diverse strengths. You

need a diverse set of skills in order to apply different types of people to different

situations. Since they will be very diverse in their strengths, they will also likely

need to be managed differently. Know how to give them what they need to be

successful by having a flexible management style. The kinds of resources you

want are going to need to be constantly challenged and engaged.


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I’ve been fortunate enough to find this talent in my career and, when I do, I

find ways to work with them again and again. Who wouldn’t want to have these

people on their team? They meet with their stakeholders, rally them around a

goal, keep everyone moving and feeling good about it because their own personal

needs are being addressed, and get things done…on time and as expected.

With the kind of talent described above, you can safely let go of the reigns

and trust them to get the job done. Isn’t that what we are all looking for?


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Chapter 5:

PMO Building Block 5: Successful Change

Leadership


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Creating Change Advocacy in Your Organization

Change management is essentially about three things: The project, the

people and the people. What does that mean? The project is about the work that

needs to be accomplished. Essentially, we are talking about the scope. Getting

this work done, by the way, is also about the people. In order for any project to be

successful, you need that talent we discussed earlier, driving the changes within

the organization, and they must bring along those stakeholders that are a part of

the change.

Secondly, successful change management is about the people side of

change. That means that we must have a good change management strategy in

place that looks at what needs to

change (the project) and how that

change is going to be implemented

(through the people). There are many

methodologies out there that help you

figure out how to create a great

change strategy. One of my

favorites is Prosci’s change

management methodology.

Above all, though, it’s about the people. What do I mean here? I am talking

about the sponsorship of your change. The number one reason that change


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initiatives fail or succeed can be clearly tied back to how active and engaged the

sponsors are on the change initiative. Sound right? Think back to any change

projects you were a part of or are a part of right now. Are your sponsors

engaged? Are they asking the right questions about how they can help, and

removing barriers for you to be successful? If not, you are going to feel like you

are pushing a boulder up a hill with others simultaneously pushing it back down

the hill. Why is that? Because they are!

Change is tough. Not everyone is going to be onboard with the changes you

are creating in the organization via your PMO. So, what do you

do?

First, you start with change agents.

Following the principles outlined in hiring the

right change agents in your PMO, you should be on

your way to solving for the PMO as change agents.

They are the champions for change and the ones driving

the changes within the organization. Once you’ve got

them on board, you then focus on those that are likely to

work with you to drive change within the organization. They

are the stakeholders on the project that are eager to roll up their sleeves and

help. They are activists for the change and they are vocal about wanting to see

progress. LEVERAGE THEM.


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These groups of change agents in your PMO, and across the organization,

can be organized and leveraged in a way that lets them

provide a “leadership from the bottom up” approach.

Work with their passion and give them the information

they need to act as vocal supporters of the changes

you are creating within your organization. You should

also empower them to hold others in your organization

accountable for the change they need to participate in.

Leading by example and asking the right questions is a

quick way to get the positive reinforcement your

change initiative will need.

Secondly, you must engage your sponsors.

This is a big one. I remember being relatively new to an organization and

watching what happens when sponsors don’t know how to engage. I was hired to

build a PMO, but before I was there, they had hired several program managers

and said, “OK, now you are a PMO”. They brought me in to help teach these

program managers how to “be program managers,” and to build a PMO to

manage some transformational change the company was about to undertake. I

quickly observed that, yes, the PMs did need some education, but you know who

was really in need of some training? The sponsors.


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No one had taken the time to explain to them their role in the changes they

were responsible for implementing. They would stare at the PM in a sponsor

update and just wait for the PM to report on, and then provide, solutions for the

problems they were facing. So, one of my first and most important acts was to

pull all of these sponsors together and teach them

what it meant to be a sponsor. They need to feel

responsible for the changes because, oh by the way,

they are responsible for the changes! They are the

business unit leaders that are supposed to be

creating change in their organizations. They are

leveraging the PMO as a facilitator of that change,

but they are ultimately accountable. Help them learn this and tie this

accountability to their professional success, and you will be on your way. Look for

a separate article specifically on the roles and responsibilities of a sponsor in

coming months!

Once you have educated your sponsors, you have to keep them actively

engaged. You do this by giving them access to all of the information they need on

a regular basis to make educated and informed decisions, remove barriers, and

champion the change. When you give them this information, you then tell them

what they need to act on and the impact of any decisions they make. This will

help them accomplish a shared objective. You will make them look good while

they are getting done what you need to get done for the changes to be successful.

As they are driving results, they are now seen as someone that can make real


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change happen in the organization and, oh by the way, they are becoming a huge

advocate of the PMO in the process…everyone likes someone that makes them

look good.


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Chapter 6:

PMO Building Block 6: Alignment with What

Matters


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Driving Real Change across an Enterprise

I’m going to wrap up this series by going back to the beginning. Alignment

with what matters means that you master both the art and the science of

establishing a PMO. First, you have the right people, doing the right things, the

right way. Then, once you have those fundamental building blocks in place, you

must focus your energy on creating change and aligning your PMO with the needs

of your business.

In the first post of this series, we learned how to ask the right questions to

understand how to be the “go to” resource for your leadership to manage

change. Once you figure out how to become relevant to your business leaders,

you must figure out how to stay relevant, if you want to be an invaluable solution

to your organization. Keep talking, engaging, and asking questions. Continue to

look for the places where changes need to be made. Continue to look at where

the C-suite is spending their energy. Continue to improve your PMO capabilities

to stay in touch with the needs of your stakeholders.

According to the Economist Survey: Why good strategies fail – Lessons from

the C-suite, 61% of executives admit that their firms often struggle to bridge the

gap between strategy formulation and its day-to-day implementation. The C-suite

sets organizational direction, which is realized through strategy implementation.

The challenge is that many of those brilliant visionaries don’t know how to get the


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changes implemented. That’s where the PMO comes in. They need you even if

they don’t know it! You must be the strategy navigator for your organization.

How does your PMO become the strategy

navigator? It starts with earning your seat at the

table during strategy definition. Don’t just assume

that they will know to invite you in or that you have

the right to be there. Bring a needed skill or value to

the table. The PMO can be the facilitator of the

strategy definition process. Offer to schedule the

meetings, take the notes, and facilitate the process of getting the appropriate

subject matter experts together to define the business strategy. Do whatever it

takes to get you in the room. Once you are in the room, you are a part of the

conversation. Once you are a part of the conversation, you now have a firsthand

look at the challenges the company is facing and what they are doing to solve

them. You will hear what really matters and the thinking behind getting to where

they want to go. You are now in the know.

Once the strategies are defined, the PMO is the natural place for those

changes to be managed. You have the experts, the tools, and the methodology

that is necessary to deliver on the strategies. By earning your seat at the table

during the strategy definition process, you are now also their trusted advisor and

partner on executing the strategy implementation plan.


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Finally, with the right portfolio management solution at your fingertips, you

are now the place that the executives will go to find out how their initiatives are

doing. This makes you an invaluable resource to the leadership of the

organization. When they need to know how things are going, they are coming to

your PMO. That’s exactly where you want to be.

Now let’s focus, once again, on people. Where you have your people

aligned says a great deal about what you, as a PMO leader, value. Make sure you

are aligning your talent against the portfolio of initiatives according to

their strengths, where relationships already exist, and where they

have subject matter expertise. You must use the right person for

the job. Just like every tool in the toolbox solves a different

problem, each change initiative will need a change leader

with different strengths. Don’t forget the post on PMO

Talent in this series. It is crucial to hire correctly so that you

have a team of change leaders that can fit the various types

of business changes you will need to manage.

The PMO is, and should be, a constantly evolving organization. You will

learn new things every day about the organization, the people, the culture, and

what it takes to be successful in meeting the stakeholder needs. Be aware, ask

questions, and make sure your PMO remains agile so that you can respond as the

needs shift. These techniques and an appetite for success are the key building

blocks you need to build an effective and sustainable PMO.


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Thanks for taking the time to read this eBook. If you would like to sign up to

receive our blog posts, newsletters, or any other information, please visit our

website at pmostrategies.com

I welcome your feedback and insights, as well as suggestions for new topics or

challenges you are facing when creating change. Feel free to write us at

[email protected] and we will be in touch!

Warmly,

Laura Barnard, PMP

Founder & CEO, PMO Strategies

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