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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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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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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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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We're now on to our ninth (ladies dancing) 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and some further insights from our first PMO Unconference.
[You can see the other 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas here]
In this post, we're celebrating the vibes of Coronation Street, Crossroads and Emmerdale and taking a look at a real-life PMO soap opera.
With our first three themes of Setting Up, Running and Closing Down a PMO, the stand up soap opera ran across three episodes.
Delegates took a lot of learning from this session presented by Chris Walters, take a look at the recordings:
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It's the sixth (geese a-laying) day of our 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and some further insights from our first PMO Unconference from Manchester.
We split the day into four areas: setting up a PMO; running a PMO; closing down a PMO and evolving a PMO.
To get us going we had Nicole Reilly setting us up for the day with.. Setting Up a PMO
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It's another of our 12 Stand Up for PMO Days Before Christmas and some insights from our first PMO Unconference from Manchester.
With an Unconference the agenda of the day is set by the people who participate. When they arrived at the venue, they were asked to jot down their current challenges around the four areas - setting up a PMO; running a PMO; shutting PMO down and evolving and energising PMO.
We then used some of these for the World Cafes.
During the course of the day we had two World Cafe breakout sessions - conveniently in the bar area so we called it Breakout at the Bar. If you're not familiar with the World Cafe idea, essentially when we do them at PMO Flashmob events it consists of a table with a cover which can be scribbled on; chairs for people to sit down and a theme chosen for people to talk about. As you talk, you scribble stuff down. You don't know if these scribbles are useful, it's just a way of capturing points which you think are interesting or could be useful.
The idea at the end of the discussion is to pick out what were deemed to be useful insights based on what the people around that table think are worth sharing with others.
At the PMO Unconference we captured these on an ah-ha board (as in, ah-ha that's interesting!)
In this post we share some insights from the table themes around setting up a PMO
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It has often been said that “One size does not fit all”. This is especially true in the case of developing PMOs. Companies are different product wise and cultural wise and industries require different approaches.
However, at the same time, traditionally PMOs have been employed by experienced people from the project management discipline often with certificates and exams documenting their knowledge and skills with in the whole P3O area. If this knowledge is applied generically to any given company, it may be difficult for the business units, outside the project organisation, to understand and fully grasp the idea behind a certain PMO activity. At the same time, we want to build on best practice and experience done by others.
How to tailor your PMO activities to fit your company and how do you find the balance between generic project management processes and the need to tailor your PMO activities, in order to facilitate the implementation and gaining the respect of your colleagues (outside the PMO).
This session will explore this dilemma via case stories.
Takeaways:
How have other PMOs dealt with this dilemma?
Clarifying your organisation’s need for tailoring the PMO activities
Which criteria can you use to define the need for tailoring
Specific examples of tailor-made PMO activities
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