“The PMO Lifecycle: Building, Running & Shutting Down” by William Dow, PMP is my go-to book when setting up or improving a PMO, and I keep it close to hand on my business bookshelf for easy reference. It’s definitely a how-to manual, packed with checklists, diagrams and review questions to embed your learning. You can…
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I often get asked what PMO stands for (especially by baffled members of my family!). Well the ‘P’ can stand for project, programme or portfolio, the ‘M’ stands for management, and the ‘O’ stands for office – or officeR – because let’s face it how can a person like me be an office? …so PMO…
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A bit about PMO Flashmob If you are a PMO professional working in or around London and you haven’t yet heard about PMO Flashmob, then you’re missing out. No really, you are. PMO Flashmob is a networking group for PMO people run by Lindsay Scott that has been around for long enough now that it has started forgetting how old it…
View detailsThis is the question that the panel set out to answer at the most recent meeting of the Project Data Analytics Meetup, hosted as usual by Martin Paver. I’d like to focus on a few key things that resonated with me during the evening…
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Back in the summer of 2019 I received an invitation from Americo Pinto, Chair of the PMO Global Alliance, to attend a one-off session he would be running in central London after the annual awards ceremony. It was pitched as an opportunity to provide feedback on the PMO Value Ring (PMO-CP) certification, and included the option to take…
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This week’s webinar with PMO Flashmob was an opportunity to share some ideas with PMO professionals around how to engage senior stakeholders more with the insights they are providing. Many were surprised when one of the polls during the session indicated that the most popular way of sharing information is via Microsoft PowerPoint. I must…
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A PPM tool is software designed to be an enterprise-wide, strategic solution which facilitates more effective project portfolio management. It’s a multi-million turnover industry, full of hundreds of options ranging from free and instantly accessible to costing thousands and taking months to configure and implement. Gartner’s Magic Quadrant is regarded as the go-to source of information…
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In a previous post, I cautioned against starting your PPM tool journey by contacting vendors and looking at the various tools on offer; that it’s the equivalent of deciding on a solution before you’ve fully understood what the problem is that you’re trying to solve. 6 questions to consider first… 1. What are the business problems…
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How PMOs can smooth the path of projects, to help make changes more “sticky” A while back I attended a PMO FlashMob discussion facilitated by Ranjit Sidhu of ChangeQuest and hosted as usual by Lindsay Scott. This session was on how PMO professionals can help projects to deliver organisational change more effectively. There were several interesting take-away messages, of which I found the…
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What does it REALLY mean & how can the PMO achieve it? The truth is, it’s not up to the PMO to determine whether it is adding value or not – that decision is made by its customers. Also, the perceived value added will be different depending on the operational context of that PMO i.e. what…
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