PMO Strategies

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to dive right into changing your mindset as a PMO leader. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, or even 002, Instill Focus, definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Doing so will set the framework for how we landed here, on mindset first and the important first step to shifting mindset. The second step in this super important mindset work is to Measure Outcomes. We are going to redefine what success looks like in your PMO. Thinking Differently About Value It’s time to redefine success for our PMO and projects. IMPACT PMO Leaders understand that measuring progress is not sufficient. We’ve got to know that we have achieved the intended outcomes in a way that is driving high-IMPACT. Today, so many PMO leaders define their success by the success of their projects, but that’s only part of the success story for a PMO and we may not even be telling that part quite right. There’s a difference between the success of your projects and the IMPACT the PMO is making overall, depending on the capabilities and services the PMO delivers. There’s also a huge disparity in how many PMO leaders are defining success even with our projects. Often, success is being defined by how much work is happening, how much money is being spent, or how much overall progress is being made. We confuse progress with outcomes and assume that just because we are busy, just because we are making progress, we are successful. That’s not the case. Progress does not equal IMPACT. We need to look at redefining success in terms of the IMPACT we are making with our PMO and the IMPACT we achieve with our projects. We also need to develop metrics unique to the PMO that track PMO progress and IMPACT, separate from project delivery. 1. Understand that EVM is not enough Ironically, Earned Value Management (EVM) doesn't measure value. EVM measures schedule performance and cost performance, but it doesn't really tell you anything about value and it certainly doesn't tell you anything about IMPACT. It doesn't measure actual outcomes and whether those were achieved. Therein lies the challenge. EVM alone cannot tell your business leaders if they are going to achieve high-IMPACT business outcomes for the work that was done, only if that work will be done according to what you expect/planned from a cost and schedule perspective. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say your project was to implement a new system. The reason (your project “Why”) the system is being implemented is to create a new revenue source for the organization. Your project team diligently delivers all the defined scope, according to the originally determined timeline, and even does all the work under budget. Once the system is live, everyone expects this big bang on that new revenue, but it doesn’t come. No one uses the system. It turns out that along the way, some key questions were missed that could have shifted that direction. Was the right due diligence done up front to determine if the market really needed this system? Did the project include the proper marketing and communications planning to introduce that new system to the market? When scope decisions were made, did the team go back to the business case to determine if these changes would affect the intended outcomes? The questions are countless, but the outcome is the same. The project did not realize the intended IMPACT. In the eyes of the business stakeholders, this project is a failure, even if your project team did “everything right” according to EVM. We have to close this gap between your perception of success and theirs. EVM is a great resource for measuring project performance and one that I encourage you to study and apply when and how it makes sense to do so, but that’s not all we need to be measuring.

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to dive right into changing your mindset as a PMO leader. If you haven't listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode or 001, The PMO Reset, definitely go back and listen to or read those first. Doing so will set the framework for how we landed here, on mindset first. The first step in shifting our mindset is to find focus. In this episode/post we are going to learn specific techniques to help you distill what is important and get laser focused to create the IMPACT you desire for your organization. Finding Focus If you are like me, you like to have about 50 things going on at once. After all, there’s always a little downtime on this project or that one, and that’s just enough time to squeeze in some work on this one over here…and that one over there…yeah, that’s the story of my life. BUT, here’s what I’ve always found to be true…when I slow down and focus on just one thing at a time, I can get more done in the long run. If you are being completely honest with yourself, you probably know this is true for you, as well.  As much as we want to think we are multitaskers, what we are really doing is a lot of task switching and creating a lot of rework and lost productivity time in the process. So, here’s the techniques I learned to employ when I was a PMO leader inside organizations and this is secret #1 I share with my students and clients today. 1. Solve Business Problems When starting a PMO, most of what you read or learn in courses suggests that you start by building a charter and creating your vision and mission. Or, even worse, they tell you to figure out your PMO model or type. Then, it’s off to building and creating process, methodology, and templates. Sadly, this is missing the most important step and assumes that you already know what’s best for the organization. But in much of the literature and courses, there’s no defined process to ask that most important, yet very simple question. Successful PMO leaders understand that they don’t have all the answers. We have no business creating anything until we’ve determined what business problem we are solving. The most important step when starting or refreshing your PMO is ensuring you have answered the question, “Why is the PMO here and what business problem must be solved?” First things first. We must assess the organization for IMPACT opportunities to understand your PMO purpose. Before you create the list of services you will provide or start building templates and process, you need a mission, a greater purpose that you are fulfilling through the PMO construct. Your mission is not to manage projects. Your mission is not to create templates and tools. Your mission is to get to outcomes that positively IMPACT the organization you serve by driving overall greater throughput and higher return on investment (ROI). To do that, you need to be very clear on the business pain points, challenges, or new opportunities that your PMO will help solve. Get crystal clear on that before you do anything else. Even if you think you know what’s best for them, you are probably wrong. Don’t guess. You must not assume you know what’s best for the organization. Whether you’ve been there 1 month or 20 years, you still aren’t inside the heads of the business leaders that are creating the opportunity for the PMO. Ask them. Talk to them a lot! They will eventually tell you what you need to know, but you must be listening for it because sometimes it’s not obvious or on the surface. Sometimes, the real reasons the PMO has been started isn’t even for the reasons they’ve been telling everyone. So, we have got to be listening intently for the truth. That means you must stop telling, talking, selling, and convincing and just listen, observe, and pay attention to the subtleties.

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Today we are going to explore the real reason that we create PMOs and how you might want to think a little bit differently about your PMO and your role as a PMO leader in helping to drive organizational strategy delivery. If you have not listened to episode 000, the Introductory episode, I highly recommend you go back and listen to that episode or read that post first. It sets the stage a little bit for what we're going to talk about in this here and going forward. It gives you a little bit of a perspective on my background and why I'm so passionate about helping you as a PMO leader achieve the highest possible return on investment for all of your efforts when it comes to building, running, accelerating, or even rescuing your PMO. Where are we today with PMOs? That is a big question to understand before we talk about where we want to take PMOs. Recently I was keynoting a conference and also speaking on a panel about PMOs and hosting a PMO workshop. I was sharing the stage with some of my favorite PMO thought leaders on this panel, you will definitely hear more from in upcoming posts and episodes. During the panel, we were asked some very interesting questions about where PMOs are today and where they're headed. Are we headed for more PMOs? Is the PMO concept dying? Do people really understand what the PMO does? And as we were having these great questions asked, I was really interested in hearing the perspectives of some of my colleagues that were there that literally have decades and decades of experience in the project management space and in PMOs. I mean we are easily over a hundred years of PMO and project management experience among the people that were on the panel. What was most interesting was thinking about how all of us come from very different perspectives and backgrounds. While our experiences have been different, we all had some really positive things to say about where we believe PMOs are going with the huge caveat that we must make a shift in the way we think about the PMO and the role that the PMO must play in helping to deliver on the strategy for your organization. Okay. Now let's pause on that for one second. I'm not saying that PMO needs to be strategic, but I do believe that the PMO has a critical role in helping the organization to deliver on strategic objectives. It could be that your PMO has a very functional or tactical place in the organization and you're just knocking stuff out and getting projects done and that's great. Alternatively, you could have a seat at the strategy table helping to define the strategy for the organization and anything in between. What your PMO does from a service perspective is very much dependent on the needs of the organization. That's why I truly believe that no two PMOs look exactly alike because your PMO should be focused on how you can make an IMPACT and deliver on what the business leaders actually need and are asking for. As we start digging into some of the data and statistics, some of it will sound a little depressing. Don't worry, I will talk to you about what we can do about what the data is telling us. I can clearly see the gap that I know a lot of PMOs have between what the business leaders want (A.K.A. your sponsor and stakeholders), and what they're asking for you to help them do (A.K.A. where many PMOs are focusing their energy). Okay, so let's dig into some of this data and then let's talk about what we should be doing about it. Now, for some of you, what I share with you is going to be really familiar. Some of the things we talk about, you're going to say, oh, I resonate with that remark. Others of you are going to say, you know what? I think I'm okay. I am not having this problem and if that's you I am thrilled. Definitely stick around because I want to feel your virtual head nodding as we go th...

PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen (Strategic and Business Management) Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! Well, hey there! Welcome to the PMO strategies Podcast. I am your host, Laura Barnard, and I am honored and grateful that you are allowing me to spend a little bit of your day with you. My mission is to help PMO leaders, and those wanting to leverage the power of project management, make a big IMPACT in this introductory episode, I'm going to give you a little background about me and my philosophy on PMOs. I'm going to talk to you about why this podcast is so important to me, and how I'm going to help you unleash your professional potential so that you can make a huge IMPACT with your PMO. Now, for those of you that are not PMO leaders, but work in a PMO, manage projects or programs, or just interested in learning, if a PMO can help you deliver on your organization strategy. Don't worry. I've got plenty for you too. You see many of the techniques that I will share with you over the coming episodes will apply to you too because it's all about figuring out the best way to leverage what we know and what we need to know to get it done. So, who am I? Very early in my career, I fell in love with big transformational change. I happened to be a part of developing the very first program to require graduate students to do their thesis and dissertations electronically published on the internet, back in the beginnings of the internet. There, I saw just how incredible big changes like that could be to helping people share their message and literally change the world. Fast forward to 1999 where I had my first chance to build a PMO. I was asked to help the organization oversee and manage the portfolio of e-commerce projects that we're all moving forward at a frenetic pace with new technologies, new mindsets and new ways of delivering value, it was at the height of the dotcom craziness, and it was a wild ride, but I loved every second of it! That was at the beginning of what we now call the internet. It was not as easy to find what you needed if you were building your first PMO Google was not yet mainstream. And even if it had been there wasn't much online you can find that would help you figure out how to build a run a PMO. You couldn't simply type, how to build a PMO into Google and get almost 8 million results like you can today. You couldn't simply go to Amazon and order a bunch of books on building and running a PMO. Back then, you could maybe find a course or a book at the library or even in the bookstores. But you were mostly on your own. I had to figure out the best way to build the right capabilities and services to help our organization deliver on our customer’s initiatives. You see, all of these companies were getting their first ever chance to get their products and services out to the world. How exciting was that?? I made some mistakes. I learned a lot of lessons and I started seeing some magic happen when we figured it out. Now fast forward to today, where there are so many options and so much information out there telling you all the things you should or shouldn't do with your PMO, and it can be quite overwhelming. Just as overwhelming as it can be when you don't have enough information, having been in your shoes in the role of PMI leader inside organizations, and now having spent about two and a half decades, helping people make a big IMPACT driving transformational change. I get what you're dealing with the challenges you face and want nothing more than to help you be successful. By sharing what I've learned what I know works and what will help you reduce the stress, the headaches, the frustration, the confusion, and overwhelm that can come when you are trying to set up,  run, or even rescue a PMO. Over the coming episodes, you will see my belief system unfold. You will also learn a lot of real, practical, immediately applicable techniques that will help you make a big IMP...