PMO HotHouse

In last week's #PMOwfh we took inspiration from the bestselling book, The First 90 Days from Michael D. Watkins. John has done a great write up about the book itself and you should head over there immediately for a great read. The book specifically focuses on critical success strategies for starting a new role as a leader. We thought how useful is this as we emerge from the pandemic so we set about getting PMO practitioners to think about this themselves. Whether you are a contractor starting a new gig, or a PMO person returning from a period of being furloughed, or you're going to be starting something completely new in a permanent role - we explore the first 90 days. How will you create value? What are you there to do? What is your mandate? What do key stakeholders expect of you... over what time-period? How will your performance be measured? The critical success strategies outlined fall into 9 key areas: Promote yourself Accelerate your learning Match strategy to the situation Secure early wins Negotiate success Achieve alignment Build your team Build coalitions Keep your balance To find out more about each area you should really head over to [The first 90 days are crucial to success post Covid19] You can also watch John deliver his 10-in-10 - 10 slides in 10 minutes, a regular feature each week, great for those with attentions that wander.

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I can't believe we've not covered PMO Charters before at PMO Flashmob but last week on #PMOwfh that was the theme for the afternoon session. What is a PMO Charter? Well you can read on to have a listen to the video session; take a look at the slidedeck; find out what your PMO peers think and even download a few examples.

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We continue our weekly PMO Flashmob meetups on a Wednesday (with the delightful HotPMO as co-host!). Each week (even now eight, nine weeks later) feels slightly out of control as we have group chats; breakout sessions; quick-fire presentations; using different collaborative tools; show-and-tells and the odd jingle thrown in there. We started it, well, because we knew we wouldn't be in our usual haunts (aka pubs) for a while and we would miss chatting to others and sharing stuff like we normally do. Over the past couple of months so far in lockdown we've learnt together - especially how to get on in the virtual world - and how our work might be changing now and in the future. Sometimes we've gone for themes, sometimes not. In this post, we share the outcomes from a session about development. In it we kick off with a ten-in-ten (10 slides, 10 minutes); then onto a crowdsourced view of what development people have undertaken (taken across four different levels of roles); a chat about what's been useful in their development and finally, what further development people are looking to do. Interested? Read on.

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In last week's #PMOwfh we had a great session led by Adam Skinner about the impact the pandemic has had on our organisation's portfolio of projects - lots of mothballing and projects put on hold. The session also looked forward to recovery and the thinking that is required now, to start getting a plan in place for recovery. The PMO has a role to play in that recovery and in this 30-minute session, Adam takes us through that.  

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From our weekly #PMOwfh we asked the question and you let us know! [Click to enlarge] #lessonsfromthelockdown

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