PMO Research

Quite Interesting PMO Research

Here's the first of our 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and some insights from our first PMO Unconference. In this 15 minute session, we share the Quite Interesting PMO Research bit. All the sessions at the PMO Unconference were designed to be short and packed with information that hopefully signposts you to places to read more. In this session, I shared some of the latest insights from those in the research community who are focused on PMO. I wanted to cut through the research speak and explore what was useful for the PMO practitioner today.
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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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Is the Modern PMO Achieveable?

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.
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The PMO Methodology \\ The Steps to Value Generation

At the beginning of March I went along to an APM PMOSIG event in London. It was a session by Americo Pinto - a PMO thought leader and researcher who comes from Brazil. I've seen Americo's name popping up in places - his research papers, some Linkedin posts, bumped into him at the PMO Symposium, and finally with his work on PMO Tools and something called the PMO Value Ring
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Top Ten Messages from the PMO Symposium 2016

This year's theme at PMI's PMO Symposium was all about Benefits Management, a big change from last year where the talk was all about portfolio management. There were about 700-800 people in attendance over the three days - and the set up was the same as last year. Some opening keynote speeches - a learning excursion (I picked the hospital - fascinating when you compare it to the NHS and what we have here) - then sessions you could pick from across six different streams. Some of these streams were what they called Knowledge Hubs, small groups of people being facilitated in a discussion about a particular topic. This year, Eileen Roden, PMO Flashmobber joined me - and we bumped into John McIntyre (Ticketmaster PMO Manager, who was presenting a couple of sessions) and Mr Portfolio, Craig Kilford. So what did I take away from this year's PMO Symposium? Here are my top ten messages:
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Top Ten Messages from PMO Symposium 2015

The theme for this year's PMI PMO Symposium was portfolio management - or strategy execution - depending on how you like to call that. It is in effect the second year the PMO Symposium has focused on this particular angle which tells you something about which type of PMO is the hot favourite right now. In fact over the three days of the Symposium you'll be hard pushed to find any sessions or conversations about project or programme office and because of portfolio angle, the audience was very much targeted right. So what did I learn - or take away from the three days spent in Arizona? Well, I thought about calling this article the top ten trends but that would be stretching it so instead I've gone with what key messages were put out there that leave some food for thought:
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PMO Notable Quoteables

Last week's PMO Flashmob was back to a social evening in Central London near St Paul's. We always have some little networking gimmick just to help new people connect with returning PMO Flashmobbers. It also helps the initial conversations and hopefully gets people thinking. This time it was PMO Notable Quoteables which was a selection of quotes, each one about PMO in some way. Each little group of 2, 3 or 4 people, just picked one, read the quote and then had a discussion about it.
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