Who we are, what to expect, how to get the most out of the day.

Do executives know the purpose and value of their PMO? Do business unit managers think they need a PMO? Do agile practitioners even want a PMO?

For most organizations, the answer to all three of these questions is no. And, according to research conducted by the presenter, 9 out of 10 PMOs are not business driven in their initial setup, 5 out of 10 PMOs experience three distinct churns and changes in the PMO approach before becoming business driven, and 3 out of 10 PMOs never become business driven and are either shut down or are continued on as a low value, staff function.

This session will present research and insights that reveal why so many PMOs are not business driven and often fail as well as the critical foundational building blocks of the Business Driven PMO that ensure the success of the PMO and the delivery of value to the leadership team.

Attendees will learn:

• How to apply the PMO Mandate / Practices Magic Quadrant to ensure a Business Driven PMO
• Servant-leadership techniques to establish the purpose and value of the PMO
• How to develop the components of the Business Driven PMO mandate
• How to determine the value of the PMO
• How to establish PMO goals and measurable objectives that serve as fulfillment of value
• How to establish a PMO Performance Dashboard
• How to apply Stakeholder Bias in the management of projects and operations of the PMO

Attendees will receive:

• Template and instructions for using the PMO Mandate / Practices Magic Quadrant
• Template and instructions for using the Business Driven PMO Mandate
• Template and instructions for using the “Nemawashi” facilitation technique
• Template and instructions for using the a PMO Performance Dashboard
• Template and instructions for using Stakeholder Bias in the management of projects
• Template and instructions for using Stakeholder Bias in PMO project portfolio reports
• A one-year self-study syllabus that will develop the business acumen and leadership skills required to set up and manage a Business Driven PMO

The portfolio comes first

Outcome – Understanding that portfolios should not be viewed as a consolidation of projects and programs but as a vehicle to achieve an organization’s strategic goals.  Recognizing the importance of the PMO in building an effective portfolio.

Attendees Will Create:

This will be a planning activity where participants can identify the variables that contribute to goals, project selection and updated plans.  Participants will walk away with a completed template of the issues that need to be considered in setting goals, defining the project mix in the initial portfolio and then updating portfolio plans.

• Organizational goals (strategy, competitor actions, market opportunities, customer demands, etc.)
• Project mix (business cases, cost / benefit analysis, alignment with needs, work distribution, business area distribution, risk distribution, etc.)
• Updated plans (performance variations, shifting goals, new opportunities, benefits variances, etc.)

In this session, John and Dave will share with us the key characteristics of Project Management 2.0 and explain why PM 2.0 has emerged in response to the deficiencies of traditional project management.  This session will emphasize the project manager’s emerging role in strategic planning and project leadership and discuss how to achieve more meaningful information with KPIs, metrics, and dashboards.  John will also share with us the current state of PM 2.0 adoption, provide recommendations on how to get started and explain how PM 2.0 can reduce project costs and ensure delivered business value.

Attendees will learn:

• Why PM 2.0 has emerged to address deficiencies of traditional project management
• The six components of PM 2.0 and why each is critical to project management excellence
• The success that early PM 2.0 adopters have realized

Attendees will receive:

• Specific recommendations on how to begin implementing PM 2.0 today
• Complimentary license of “Advanced Management Insight” express edition to help realize PM 2.0
• Case study of putting the tools into practice

PMO leaders are typically challenged with balancing scarce resources across a multitude of organizational priorities, and with ensuring that those resources stay fully utilized.  The pressure to start new initiatives the moment any resources become available is high; however, succumbing to this pressure ensures a low-performing portfolio with painfully slow delivery.  So, what are PMO leaders to do?  This session will offer a “win-win” approach for delivering on the ever-growing appetite for more initiatives, within organizational resource constraints.

Outcome or “A-Ha Realization”:  By choosing to see a project portfolio as a flowing system—and not just as a collection of initiatives—we can begin to apply flow-maximization principles to accelerate the delivery of desired results.  Even better, these principles are simple in concept, and proven to generate dramatic jumps in portfolio performance.

Attendees Will Learn:

1. Start less to finish more.  By establishing a single, prioritized list of projects—and then putting the bottom 30-50 percent of that list on hold—you can likely double your project completion rate.
2. Stagger according to the constraint.  By timing the start of any new project to the capacity of your portfolio’s single-biggest resource constraint, you can push your completion rate even higher.

Attendees Will Receive:

1. Readiness checklist (Excel-based)
2. Portfolio improvement model (Excel-based)

Now that agile methods are here to stay, executives are looking to PMO leaders for answers to fundamental questions: How can our organization become more agile? What outcomes can we expect to get from Agile methods? Even more puzzling is the impact to our own jobs: If agile methods encourage self-organizing teams, what does that mean for the role of a PMO, or even our project managers itself? In this eye-opening session, we will sift out fact from fiction and walk away with actionable tips for evolving your PMO to support agile methods.

Attendees Will Learn: 

• How to describe the forces driving the use of Agile methods
• The ways a PMO can support Agile methods
• How to best develop a context-driven hybrid Agile approach

Attendees Will Create:

• Using the provided worksheet, select which of the 4  Hybrid models illustrated would best serve the provided canned scenario
• In the provided canned scenario, design a strategy for PMO to achieve agile-related outcomes

Create your IMPACT Delivery road map that addresses the likely hurdles that will come your way as you take what you’ve learned and apply it to your PMO. Gain the confidence to have the crucial conversations back at the office to make this plan a reality.

Attendees Will Learn:

• The mindset shifts we must put in place to elevate our own PMO leadership thereby preparing us to effectively implement these improvements learned throughout the day.
• The way to implement these capability and operational improvements for your PMO in a reasonable way that ensures success.
• How to address the inevitable change resistance and garner the right executive support to make these changes stick.

Attendees Will Create:

After exploring the “gotcha” areas and the possible “yeah buts” you will face back at the office, we will work together to develop a plan for addressing those roadblocks to implementing your new PMO directives. We will also develop a reasonable IMPACT Delivery Road Map that will help you put a realistic plan in place for delivering the new capabilities to help make your PMO the kind of organization that your business leaders are craving (and will fully support)!

Dive deeper in a small group format with the instructor and topic that is most important to your PMO success. Using the Open Space approach, Sit in a Circle – Put up a Bulletin Board – and Get to Work, attendees will self-determine key PMO issues and opportunities from which to share experiences, exchange techniques, and seek out the best approaches for ensuring PMO success and avoiding PMO pitfalls. The unique format of Open Space provides for the wealth of domain knowledge from the instructors and deep experience from the attendees to be harnessed in a set of useful and actionable take-aways.