Setting Up a PMO

The Role of the PMO Director

We welcomed Mitch Rollings who is a PMO Director for Westpac Bank in Australia. Mitch has worked within PMO for many years - both within the UK and Australia. Mitch's session is open, honest and frank about his experiences and his approach to performing the role successfully. He starts off by giving an overview of the structure of the organisation and where the PMO and his role fits into that and talks about his first 100 days in post - the areas that were focused on. He also talks about some of the pain points of the role and of course some of the successes. In this article, you can see the session yourself, plus we add our ten favourite insights.
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PMO Models and Resourcing

We really love listening to other PMO practitioners' experiences and we know many of our members do too. In this session, we listen to Gary Heath, a long time supporter of House of PMO and luckily for us, vastly experienced in PMO. As he says in his opening introduction, he's worked in pretty much any type of role, for example, permanent, contractor, fixed-term, consultant, associate - you name it he's done it. A great session for anyone at any level in the PMO - it's always interesting to hear how other practitioners have managed their careers and the insights they've learnt along the way.
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PMO Conference 2021 \\ COVID-19 Vaccination Deployment Programme – Liz Howarth & Mark Angus

Perhaps one of the hardest working PMO teams of the last 18 months, we kick off the PMO Conference 2021 with an inspirational story. How did the PMO manage to come together to build the wings whilst the plane was flying to support the delivery of the first vaccination in December 2020 and the subsequent millions of vaccinations since? What were the priorities; what were the challenges and the triumphs? What was the technical response of the PMO and how did they support the people and cultural side of such a high profile deployment. How did they fair personally and emotionally – keeping pace with the ups and downs – and what do they think about their part in such a historical event. We hear from two of the central PMO team from the COVID-19 Vaccination Deployment Programme.
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Understanding the PMO

Ever heard or seen that quote which talks about PMOs closing down every three to four years? If so, this is the book where it comes from BUT that quote is wrong! What it actually said was a PMO tends to close down or gets reconfigured every three to four years - mainly due to the fact that the business also changes during that time too. That's one of the reasons why we started up the PMO Book Club - to read, understand and have a chat amongst ourselves about texts that can help our thinking around the job that we do in PMO. In this article, we share the recorded session, the deck and the insights from the book club.
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PMO Service: Capability Development and Competency Frameworks

One of the P3M Enabling competences with the House of PMO Competency Framework is Capability Development.  The definition of the competence is to “assess and support the continuous development of individual competence and collective professionalism to successfully deliver the current and anticipated portfolio of change”.  This competence is required for the development of competence frameworks and role profiles for all those involved in the delivery of the portfolio – including Sponsors, Portfolio, Programme and Project Managers and PMO staff. On our inaugural PMO panel discussion, there were three individuals with a wealth of experience in developing role profiles, bespoke competence frameworks, developing career paths, undertaking competence assessment and planning development activities, to share their experiences and provide practical hints and tips. 
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