Back in March, after the Project Challenge show we had an evening we called the PMO Maturity Triangle.
The evening was all about maturity and why the triangle? It was about the three areas of maturity that affect you, that’s:
Organisational maturity – the organisation and it’s project management maturity.
PMO maturity – that’s the PMO’s own maturity in how it performs, what it offers etc.
Your maturity – that’s your own individual capability and how you perform your role.
It was a roundtable event with some presentation materials thrown in to generate the discussion around these three areas.
In terms of output - especially around the final one - your maturity - we're in the process of setting up a working group to explore this further because we know just how many of you would like to see some kind of development in something like a competency framework for PMO people. We'll let you know when we launch the first working group.
So in terms of the other two sides of the triangle, here's an overview of what we looked into.
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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 :)
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Last week we were over at Project Challenge - right now in fact, Wednesday morning - probably meeting you if you came along to the first day. Loads of you did come over the two days - some of you reading this are probably brand spanking new to PMO Flashmob so hello!
As is the tradition with the PMO Flashmob stand, we always like to ask you a question or two as well.
This time we asked "What is the top current challenge you have in resource management right now?"
Of course we were asking because of the new Report we've released - it's here - and it's about resource management.
So what was on the board
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We have another PMO Flashmobber who attended Project Challenge the other week - Fran Bodley-Scott - and she shares some of the insights she learnt from Project Challenge.
Survey results might seem a bit dry and unexciting first thing in the morning but last week at Project Challenge I’m glad I made the effort to arrive in time for Michael’s Cooch’s presentation about the results from PwC’s Annual Global CEO Survey. I specialise in stakeholder relationship management, so I’m always on the look out for hints about what’s keeping the C-Suite awake at night, and this presentation didn’t disappoint. The reason I want to highlight it is that the insights were a real gem for any PMO seeking to engage more effectively with their CxO’s.
I don’t plan to reproduce PwC’s data here – the link above will lead you to lots of interesting stuff (disclaimer: I have no connection with PwC so this is my independent view). Consider this as a business case for why PMO’s should be plundering this sort of data shamelessly.
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I recently spent a day at Project Challenge. If you work in projects and you don't know about this event, then you should really make the effort to go. Over two Autumn days in London (and in some years one spring day in Birmingham), you have the opportunity to hear the latest thinking from industry speakers, talk to PM software and training providers, membership organisations and consultants. If (like me) you've been around the industry for a few years, you're bound to bump into someone you know who you haven't seen for a while.
I was helping Lindsay and Eileen to crew the PMO FlashMob stand, and met some interesting people with some interesting challenges - from the PM trying to improve the way the emergency services work together, through the PM considering a move into PMO in the laundry business, to the cool dude in the bright yellow suit giving away Starbucks vouchers!
Whilst I was there I managed to take in a few presentations. Here are some highlights:
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This session recorded at Project Challenge in London is all about what makes good PMO people effective in their work.
Over the course of the two days we also asked people to add to our wall where we asked them about their good and bad habits.
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Last month at Project Challenge we had the opportunity to record one of the presentations that we've been keen to hear about for a while, project leadership. Sarah Coleman is co-author of the new Project Leadership book and Sarah hosted a session on that subject.
You can view the whole presentation (and I recommend you do) below.
Here's the eight insights we took away from the presentation because as you know, leadership is just as important to the PMO community too:
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I recently spent a stimulating couple of days at Project Challenge last month. One of the presentations I managed to catch was entitled "Stop Implementing a PPM Tool, and Start Solving the Problem", given by Stephen Brown of Polarisoft, from which I thought you might appreciate me relating the key take-aways.
This presentation highlighted the disappointment felt by many organisations after implementing a project portfolio management (PPM) tool, when they find that the reality of working with the tool doesn't live up to their (often unrealistically optimistic) expectations. This is commonly embodied in thoughts like "We bought the wrong tool" or "We're not mature enough for a tool".
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I spent two days at Project Challenge last month.
One of the presentations I managed to catch was entitled "Better planning makes better projects", and was given by Paul Kidston and Simon Taylor of the Association for Project Management's (APM) Planning, Monitoring & Controls Specific Interest Group (PMCSIG). You might think that this title is basic common sense, but organisational experience shows that project plans by themselves are not generally a good predictor of either project end dates or overall projects costs. Having created the initial plan, effective controls need to be applied during the course of the project to ensure the plan remains a usable road map to project delivery. So there is plenty of opportunity for the project management function to be a whole lot better at it!
With this in mind, PMCSIG has taken a "back to basics" approach and written a book on planning and controls, couched in plain English to make it easy to use as possible. I will shortly be reading and reviewing the book, but in the meantime (to help you decide whether the book is worth a closer look) here are my key take-aways from the presentation (which was effectively a "taster" of the book):
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Last week we had two days at Project Challenge, it was a first for us and we were delighted to have so many PMO people come and visit us. During the show we decided to give people a feel for what PMO Flashmob is like so we decided to have the PMO wall.
Essentially we had three topic areas going. One about PMO training, another on current challenges and the third one on trends. Visitors put up their thoughts, other people added new ones or just added comments to what was already there.There are some interesting insights and it certainly made our two days much more fun than a normal, dry exhibition!
Here Eileen, Ken and I give you the overview on what came out over the two days:
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