Assurance is a broad topic. It’s not just about carrying out project reviews, although they are an essential element, particularly for PMOs. The term covers everything that provides – and hopefully improves – confidence of successful project delivery.

PMOs have a vital role to play in ensuring that effective project assurance exists and is acted upon. Yes, that includes carrying out project reviews, but also includes the design, implementation and oversight of project controls, and providing advice to other parts of an organisation on how to implement effective project assurance arrangements.

This session will explore what we mean by the term assurance, and how it should be organised. We will also look at how to plan, execute and follow up on effective project reviews.

As Ken Bain states – “You don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on experience.”

Reflecting is listed as a key skill for PMO professionals as we undertake the role of ‘critical friend’ – helping organisations reflect on decisions and delivery of projects, programmes and portfolios. But it is also important for PMO professionals (like all other professionals) to reflect on personal decisions and delivery of our role.

As stated in the PMO Competencey Framework, reflection allows us to .’ . . . gain an understanding of why something took place in order to make inferences or decisions, or to arrive at a solution or judgement.’. Reflection is fundamental for continuous improvement.

This session will look at the benefits of reflection and some tools that we can use.