It's that time of year again when we take a look into the possibilities of PMO land next year. We've been doing these articles for a couple of years and we don't tend to be too far out. Take last year's for example: Here are last year's trends (the full article can be found here)
Coaching has often been identified as a key skill for PMO professionals. It's long been mentioned in job advertisements as "coaching and mentoring skills" and more recently with the PMO supporting Agile delivery approaches, the term 'coaching' is heard more frequently.
What does that actually mean? Coaching is surrounded in misconceptions and in this session, we're debunking some myths whilst we focus on developing our ability to be a valued partner to the business and to the people our PMO supports.
We wanted to understand what types of coaching approaches and techniques we could potentially use in our everyday work - rather than focusing on whether we could become actually coaches.
The session was led by Bekka Prideaux who, not only is an executive & leadership coach, she's experienced in project management and more importantly, gets PMO (take a look at her profile below)
Bekka took us through the fundamentals starting with;
What is coaching & why that is relevant to a PMO professional.
The spectrum of coaching - what's included, what each is.
Understanding where on the spectrum you need to be depending on where you are in your career, how mature your organisations PMO is and the skills/awareness/experience of the person you are working with when it comes to PMO.
Understanding and access to a variety of coaching skills and tools which can be used by the PMO.
The Presentation
We headed over to Bristol last month, lovely weather to be tucked up inside learning about Agile Project Governance but definitely worth it.
There were so many little gems I took away and I know that other PMO Flashmobbers there on the night had a lot of their questions answered.
Essentially we were all there to find out what exactly changes when projects are being delivered in an Agile way - when compared to traditional projects. And if something changes what does the PMO have to know about - and what do they have to do about it?
Change is an all-encompassing word used to describe the impact to processes, people and target operating models.
This can make it confusing to those who support its implementation. We know that whatever the drive for change, whether a shift in strategic direction, customer demands, the disruption of digital or AI, organisations are increasingly coming to terms with how critical strong change management practices are to the success of their transformation.
This makes change everyone’s business.
We believe the PMO is not only perfectly placed to support change but can help lead the way. Because, when the PMO understands the science behind change management and can recognise when it’s needed, it can ‘plug in’ sound change strategies, practices and thinking at the heart of every project and outcome delivered.
The PMO can broker the connection between change management and project delivery assuring effective practices are in place.
This session will help PMO leaders learn how to develop their own and their teams’ competencies and ability to support change.
Many PMOs now need to support Agile projects as well as traditional waterfall projects, moving to be a hybrid or bimodal PMO.
PMO Flashmob launch the latest Inside PMO report bringing insights from PMO Managers working in hybrid PMOs today.
The report looks at the functions and services required and answers the questions – what stays the same, what needs to change, and what is new.
The question for the PMO community is, “do you understand what additional skills and competencies you need working in a hybrid PMO?”
Many of the skills you have are still required, but some will need further honing or developed from scratch. The report looks at how the services of the PMO change when supporting Agile projects and what associated skills you will need to have to do that successfully.
It's that time of year again when we take a look into the possibilities of PMO land next year. We've been doing these articles for a couple of years and we don't tend to be too far out. Take last year's for example:
Here are last year's trends (the full article can be found here):
A clearer distinction needed between the PMO Manager and PMO Lead roles.
Looking to other business frameworks, methods, processes and tools that can help the PMO solve problems.
Moving the Agile conversation on the "Agile PMO" into real, practical activity.
More focus on development and learning for PMO.
Unpicking the value debate - understanding what the real issues are.
Changing the PMO language.
Understanding strategy in your business - including formulation.
Change is our business so we need to understand the principles of change management.
Using the right people for the job.
Making small changes that have a real impact.
We've certainly started making headways on the Agile PMO stuff; had sessions and insights on the whole value debate; heard a lot about strategy and seen how some PMOs are using change management effectively (the PMO of the Year winners did a great job with this). We've also started focusing more on development and learning in a more formal way with the new sister company, PMO Learning, which sees the new AIPMO certification for PMO hit the UK shores in 2018.
So what about next year, is it just more of the same?
I downloaded a white paper last week from ca technologies called Business Agility Begins with a Modern PMO: Change Agents.
What a title, so much to unpick, so many buzz terms, how could you not want to read that - business - agility - modern - change - agents!
The white paper is about the need for the PMO to respond to the business as it changes - it's this Gartner push that screams "internet of things", stuff being developed so quickly to get it to market before someone else does or else the company fails and goes bust. It's the sense of urgency - and how things needs to be "innovative", "creative", "collaborative" and "entrepreneurial" or else you're just a dinosaur company.
But do our companies, the organisations we work for, really show any signs of this? As a PMO do you think you're in the driving seat of this fantastically modern PMO that is guiding your organisation to super stardom?
First of all, let's understand what ca technologies believe a modern PMO to be.
The PMO Conference last month pulled together an eclectic mix of sessions, speakers, practitioners and supplying organisations. People have often asked what the theme for the conference is - it's PMO. Simple as that. It doesn't have to have one theme - or one focus - because PMO is so varied, so why not pull together a conference that celebrates that variety.
This year I was spoilt for choice when it came to putting together my top ten - those little nuggets or lightbulb moments - things that have stuck four weeks later.
If you want to see the sessions for yourself you can, there's a small fee that goes right back into PMO Flashmob so we can carry on pulling together great events in the future.
Here's my top ten:
The Golden Rule - It's Not Your PMO
Who's Who in the PMO Zoo
Agile PMO - Three is the Magic Number
Bagel Theory
PMO Principles
Epics and Sprints
We Don't Close - We Change and Evolve - Beyond the Tricky Third Year
Tailoring the PMO
Growing Up Portfolio Management Style
Flip the Switch
Big title! This is the session we gave at Project Challenge the other week. Unless you've been on the moon, you can't have helped but notice we launched our latest Inside PMO Report at the show.
It's Beyond Timesheets: The Challenges and Realities of Resource Management - we recommend you download it and either listen to the session before or after.
We also covered some of the resource management challenges from the visitors to the show, that article went out last week.
We mention in the video about wanting to take this report further so if you're interested in getting involved in some way, drop us a line through the form below.
The session is 26 minutes long - enjoy :)
‘Beyond Timesheets: The Challenges and Realities of Resource Management'
The PMO Manager’s Lunch was held to explore three distinct areas that currently present a challenge:
1.Capacity Planning – cross organisation and cross divisional/department in terms of ‘do we have enough people to do the work’
2. Allocation – down to a project level where we start to have named resources and all the fun and games of potential timesheeting issues that we do or don’t have.
3. Skills and capabilities of the delivery teams and what the PMO can do in this area for example with competency models.
