Knowledge Management

Standing Up for Lessons Learnt

It's another of our 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and some insights from our first PMO Unconference from Manchester. This is number four and we're learning lessons. In this session, Ken Burrell told us not to give up on the whole lessons learnt recorded challenges we face. We can do better, we must do better if the PMO is there to ensure the organisation performs better at programme and project management.
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The PMO is the Knowledge Broker?

At the last PMO Flashmob Online, we thought it would be good to try out a little experiment. We asked people to take a look at a piece of published PMO research and then join in the virtual PMO Flashmob where we could have a chat about that research. The research we went for was 'Project management office' a knowledge broker in project-based organisations' [you can download and have a read of that yourself here] It's a paper that was published in the International Journal of Project Management back in 2013 and touches on a few challenges that PMOs still face today - namely knowledge transfer - and yes it mentions lessons learned a few times too. In this article, we decided to share the highlights of the research (because we know that reading research papers are not everyone's cup of tea) Let's get started and get a few definitions out on the table so we know what we're dealing with.
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PMO Conference 2017 \\ PMO through the Eyes of Strategy – Richard Hinwood

The majority of the PMO’s work has focused on strategy execution through portfolio, programmes and projects yet a PMO also has the knowledge and skills to oversee the creation of an organisation’s strategy. In this session, Richard looks at what exactly strategy is, how is it formed, and how is it executed. From this he shares what the role of the PMO is in driving strategy execution; the role of PMO in supporting strategy formulation and the PMO in the Board room (how to ensure that the Board understands the value the PMO is delivering). The PMO has additional value to add and Richard will share the mutual benefits in connecting organisation strategy and the PMO. As Head of Strategy for a multi-million pound international law firm, Richard also shares real practical insights into how the PMO can successfully (and, unfortunately, completely fail!) communicate and present to the organisation’s most senior decision-makers. Takeaways: Understanding how to strengthen and build PMO capability to drive the firm’s Strategy Understanding how PMO knowledge and skills aren’t just relevant to strategy execution, but also strategy formulation Understanding how to present PMO materials to drive Board decision-making
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PMO Conference 2017 \\ Knowledge Management and the PMO – Eileen Roden & Dr Judy Payne

Knowledge is critical to the successful delivery of project and programmes. How best can PMOs support the identification, creation and use of the required knowledge? This session will challenge your understanding of what knowledge is and provide an insight into the contextual considerations that are key to determining effective knowledge management activities for projects and programmes. Takeaways: A broader understanding of knowledge management An insight into the contextual considerations key to determining knowledge management activities within a project environment An understanding of how the PMO can support knowledge management across projects and programmes
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Two Learning Tools for the PMO to Use

Earlier this year we held our first session on "learning lessons from projects" in a PMO Mini-Masterclass held in Central London (you can take a look at the whole session here). The session looked at ways the PMO can get involved in that process we call "lessons learnt" (yet we all seem to dislike that phrase!). A framework was introduced, some advice on facilitation and some different types of workshop tools or techniques that can be used. That inspired one PMO Flashmobber - Jeremy Lesourd, Process Programme Manager from De La Rue - to put pen to paper and share a couple more tools which he uses in his work. Here's Jeremy with more insights: I wanted to share a couple of tools that I use for learning following meetings, workshops and projects. These are 'Mad, Glad, Sad (the quick one…) and the 'Feedback Value Tree' (the long one!)
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Learning Lessons the Hard Way

Back in September the PMO Mini-Masterclass started tackling the subject of lessons learnt. You've probably noticed from the image above that we wanted to make sure we focus on the role of the PMO in facilitating learning rather than merely collecting "lessons" and sticking them in a database. We had Ken Burrell running the session (you've probably seen Ken's previous post about the subject) and Eileen Roden running the facilitation side of the evening. You can take a look at the whole evening plus access to the materials, video, handouts and outcomes via the PMO Mini-Masterclass page. The evening focused on some background on lessons learnt and why the current way we approach it needs a shake up. We thought actually running short forms of lessons learnt workshops would be a good way to capture this learning so we introduced two ways of doing this - perhaps techniques that you've not used before?
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Lessons Learned: How To Increase Their Impact

My recent survey asked how transferable Lessons Learned are between projects. The follow-up (you can see that once you've taken part in the survey) imparted my thoughts and summarised some of the responses I received. Some of the comments didn't quite fit into the survey format, including those from PMO Leader and fellow Flashmobber John McIntyre of Ticketmaster, who said: I've always found Lessons Learned to be something that is good in theory, but that seldom has any practical application. Attempting to condense the learnings of a project down to a few lines in a lessons log, or (dare I say it) database only serves to sanitise the lesson to the extent that the learning is inevitably lost. And why for the love of all things holy do we only do lessons reviews at the end of projects? Agile has it right here by advocating regular retrospectives where lessons are picked up and resolved continuously. I agree that the lesson could become dry and distant, and the real-life consequences of "getting it wrong" diluted. So what would be better? Back to John:
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