You can find all our articles for Free Members
Assessing PMO Team Competence
How do you know if your PMO team has all the required capabilities to deliver what the organisation needs from the PMO?
That was the big question driving our recent PMO Team Assessment session.
Recorded Session
Presentation Deck
Download the DeckInsights from the Session
Why Do PMO Competency Assessments Matter?
The PMO Competency Framework is quickly becoming a must-have tool in the PMO world. But why exactly do competency assessments matter?
- For starters, they let you benchmark your current capabilities against a professional standard
- They help identify personal strengths, development needs, and even new career opportunities for your team members
- On a team level, they ensure the PMO’s skill set is aligned to the services your business needs
- Assessments can also feed into performance reviews and future PMO design discussions – giving you data to back up those conversations about where to invest in training or how to restructure roles
Interestingly, organisations use the framework in different ways. Some are keen on checking how they stack up against industry standards, while others use it to pinpoint internal improvement areas. Sometimes it’s hard to judge your own PMO in a vacuum – “Is our PMO any good? Is it doing all the things a good PMO should be doing?”
A competency benchmark offers an objective lens to answer those nagging questions. It also highlights where each person might need “the right kind of development at the right time”. In short, these assessments let you know where you are now, so you can map out where to go next.
Individuals and Teams: Two Sides of the Coin
A key theme was that PMO competency assessments are useful at two levels – the individual practitioner and the whole team.
In practice, this means encouraging each PMO team member to self-assess and reflect on their own competences, and then looking at the combined team profile.
Individuals
For individual PMO practitioners, the framework can guide personal development.
We suggest focusing on a few areas rather than everything at once: pick 2-3 competences (or specific knowledge, skills, or behaviors) to work on first. And remember, development isn’t only formal training courses.
Development isn’t only formal training. The House of PMO offers loads of opportunities:
- Join live sessions on key topics
- Attend discussion groups
- Get involved in working groups
- Present a session or write an article
- Broaden your network and ask questions
For PMO teams, once individuals have done their assessments, the real value comes from looking at the big picture.
Teams
We shared the online demo of the manager view in the Competency Framework Online Assessment which aggregates everyone’s results. It visually shows where the team’s strengths lie and where there are gaps or inconsistencies.
Instead of keeping assessments private, the advice was to use them as a springboard for a team conversation. Get everyone together and do a team debrief – discuss the results openly (with no judgement, this isn’t a performance ranking) and share trends you see across the team. This debrief is crucial because it turns individual data points into a collective story: maybe you discover “we have three people who are really strong in risk management, but most of us scored lower in benefits realisation” – that insight can inform how you allocate work or where the team might need support.
In these debrief discussions, knowledge-sharing opportunities often emerge. One person’s weakness might be another person’s strength. In fact, “we might have some experts within our midst that we’re not even aware of”. By identifying those internal experts, you can set up mentoring or buddy systems – pairing team members to learn from each other on the job. A junior analyst strong in data analysis but weak in facilitation could buddy up with a senior coordinator known for running great workshops, and vice versa. The goal is a supportive team environment where everyone is teaching and learning from their peers.
Learning Through Reflection (The Bassot Cycle)
One of the most useful techniques discussed for individual development was reflective practice, specifically using The Integrated Reflective Cycle (Bassot, 2013).
This model guides you through four stages to learn from an experience:
- Experience – describe what happened
- Reflection – what went well/what didn’t, and why
- Theory – link to models, frameworks, or best practice
- Preparation – what you’ll do differently next time
In essence, it’s about not just moving on from an event (especially a challenging one), but pausing to extract insights and plan improvements. It forces us to think about “where can I get some practical learning on this?” and then actually prepare differently for the next similar situation.
Don’t worry – you don’t need to write a dissertation every time something happens! Even a quick informal run around this cycle can be valuable. The key is to make reflection a habit. Experience → Reflect → Learn → Adjust. Do that consistently, and over time you’ll find you’re leveling up your competences in a very organic way.
Stakeholder Engagement: A Real-World Example
To see reflective practice in action, we walked through a real-world example focused on the Stakeholder Engagement competency.
We applied the reflective cycle to it. What came out of the discussion was the realisation that effective stakeholder engagement requires proactive communication.
The PMO Competency Framework itself underscores this: both academic stakeholder theory and the framework emphasise tailoring your communication and being proactive with stakeholders, rather than assuming one-size-fits-all info will do the job.
We shared some academic theories on this kind of situation, see below in the Resources section for more reading.
In practical terms, speaking up about critical or sensitive items with key stakeholders in advance, well before the meeting was an obvious thing to do in hindsight. Planning to use tools like stakeholder maps and influence grids more rigorously – basically mapping out who needs what information and how best to reach them – and to review key touchpoints with each important stakeholder ahead of major meetings was also considered.
This example had a happy ending in the sense that it turned a negative experience into concrete actions for improvement. And it resonated with everyone, because we’ve all been there in some form.
The takeaway: when something goes wrong, don’t just move on – reflect on why and figure out how to do it better next time. Your stakeholders (and your stress levels) will thank you.
From Debrief to Development Plan (Team Approach)
After exploring individual reflection, we zoomed back out to the team level. Suppose your whole PMO team has completed their competency self-assessments – what do you actually do with that information as a manager? The session offered a clear process: Debrief → Plan → Act.
Debrief. First, hold that team debrief we mentioned earlier. Create a safe, blame-free space to discuss the aggregated results without judgment and to share overall trends. This is where you identify, as a group, “what are we good at, and where do we need to improve as a team?” It’s not about calling out anyone’s low scores; it’s about spotting patterns. Maybe everyone is confident in risk management but many feel less skilled in strategic planning – okay, that’s a flag for the team’s development focus.
Plan.Next, use those insights to build a Team Capability Plan. Think of it like a mini project plan for upskilling the team. Rather than trying to tackle 20 things, pick a few priority areas. One suggestion was to set a quarterly learning theme – for example, this quarter the focus could be improving stakeholder engagement (yes, that one again!) or financial acumen, etc., and then next quarter a different theme. You might assign “subject leads” for these themes, meaning a team member who is strong or particularly interested in that area takes the lead in organising some learning activities or tips for the rest of the team.
Also, as mentioned, leverage mentoring or buddy pairs inside the team for peer-to-peer learning. If two or three people want to develop a certain competency, have them form a little study group or do some knowledge sharing at team meetings. When everyone is involved in each other’s growth, development stops feeling like a chore and starts feeling like a team mission.
Another good idea from the session was to align your team’s development plan with the PMO’s service offerings. Many PMOs have a Service Catalogue – basically a list of services the PMO delivers (like reporting, assurance, tooling support, etc.). You can map the team’s competency results to this catalogue. For instance, if your PMO is expected to deliver great portfolio reporting but the team’s assessments show low confidence in data analysis or report design, that’s a gap to address. Conversely, you might find you have strengths in areas that aren’t fully utilised by current services – maybe an opportunity to offer more value. Using the Service Catalogue this way ensures your training and development efforts directly support the PMO’s business role. It ties skill growth to service improvement, which is a win-win for the team and stakeholders. (As a side note, House of PMO provides a PMO Service Catalogue resource as well, for those interested in this approach.)
Act. Finally, once the plan is in place, it’s about turning outputs into actions. Treat the development plan like any other project: with owners for each action, target dates, and check-ins. We even discussed making goals S.M.A.R.T. (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) so that the capability improvements can be tracked over time. The idea is to move beyond just talking about development to actually seeing progress. And don’t forget to celebrate the wins – when the team elevates a competence from, say, “basic” to “skilled” collectively, that’s worth recognising! (Check out the Celebrating Success session)
Keep Learning: “Be a Learn-It-All”
The session wrapped up on the notion that neither individual PMO professionals nor full PMO teams should ever consider themselves “finished” when it comes to learning. In fact, continuous learning is part of the PMO competency ethos – it’s baked into ongoing development.
House of PMO provides a lot of support here. We advocate the 70:20:10 learning model (70% learning through experience, 20%from others, 10% from formal training) and offer ideas for incorporating that into team and Community of Practice meetings. As mentioned earlier, there are discussion groups, working groups, conferences, and an active community you can tap into for fresh insights and shared experiences. It was suggested that as a manager, you can even host your own internal sessions – for example, a monthly “lunch and learn” where one team member teaches others about a topic they’re knowledgeable in (this also helps the presenter solidify their own knowledge). The wealth of resources is out there; it’s up to us to take advantage of them.
Perhaps the best way to summarise the mindset we all left with is through a quote shared during the session. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella famously said,
“Don’t be a know-it-all; be a learn-it-all.”
In other words, stay curious and humble in the face of all there is to know. In the PMO world – where new methodologies, tools, and business challenges are always emerging – this attitude is gold. Nadella’s approach of cultivating a learning culture at Microsoft led to the company’s market value more than tripling in five years. That’s a powerful testament to what can happen when an organisation commits to learning. We may not be running Microsoft, but our PMOs can definitely punch above their weight if we embed that learn-it-all culture.
So, as a busy PMO Manager, the next time you’re sipping your coffee and thinking about your team, ask yourself: Are we learning and growing? Competency assessments are just a tool – it’s what you do with them that counts. Use them to spark meaningful conversations, to chart a course for development, and to remind everyone (including yourself!) that no matter how much we know, there’s always something new to learn. And that’s actually the fun part of the job.
Happy learning, and here’s to continuously developing high-performing PMO teams!
Extra Reading and Resources
Below is a list of key stakeholder and change management models, each with a brief one-sentence overview and a link for further reading:
Mendelow’s Matrix (Power/Interest Grid): a stakeholder mapping tool that categorises stakeholders by their level of power and interest to help prioritise engagement and communication efforts (External Link).
Salience Model (Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997): a framework that determines which stakeholders matter most by evaluating each one’s power, legitimacy, and urgency, highlighting where managers should focus their attention (External Link).
Stakeholder Onion Model: a visual model that layers stakeholders based on their proximity to a project (primary stakeholders at the center, with secondary and tertiary groups in outer rings), which helps clarify who should be prioritised in engagement efforts (External Link).
Communication Styles (e.g., DISC or MBTI frameworks): models that classify individuals by personality or communication preference (such as the DISC behavior types or MBTI profiles), enabling you to tailor your communication approach to better connect with each stakeholder.
Kotter’s Change Model (Step 3: Create a Vision for Change): emphasises developing a clear and compelling vision of the future state to guide the change effort and inspire stakeholders to embrace the transformation (External Link).
PMI/AXELOS Stakeholder Engagement Cycle: describes a continuous five-step process (identify, assess, plan, engage, monitor) for systematically managing stakeholder engagement throughout a project, to ensure their needs are understood and addressed over time (External Link).
