One of the most frequently asked questions we get here at The PMO Professionals is “what is the best PMO tool?” The truth is that one size doesn’t fit all; just as PMO is used to describe a project, programme or portfolio office – the best PMO tool for each situation will depend on what…
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“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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From commuting in wet weather to stakeholder management. (No really – stay with me…) I often commute to and through central London on my way into work. One wet day I found cause to wish that people would carry large golfing umbrellas on busy public transport vertically when folded, because a pointy golfing umbrella held horizontally…
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I’ve been thinking about authenticity and the way that Project Managers [PMs] and PMO professionals present themselves in the professional arena. I saw a LinkedIn post a while back highlighting a vacancy advert requiring that the PM had previous experience of managing ‘ugly’ projects, and recounting experience of having interviewed multiple PMs whose projects had…
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I undertook a series of business planning sessions with business leadership coach Bekka Prideaux, which were aimed at helping me to work out what I want to achieve with my business and how to get it there. During the sessions, Bekka asked many questions – most of them were pretty simple, but required a lot…
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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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Originally posted as Friday Insight in the Major Projects Knowledge Hub This week’s shared insight is from a personal perspective, and something I hope will help you as you finish your working week and start looking forward to the next. As an independent PMO Professional, I move between organisations within different industry sectors on a…
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Part of a series on customising Microsoft® Project® to make working with project schedules more useful. This post describes how to trace predecessors and successors in MS-Project using a clever little VBA macro.
View details 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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Picture this scenario: Your company has been running various projects and programmes for a while now, with varying degrees of success regarding delivery. Those that do go well often don’t embed as well as you’d hoped, and those that don’t – if only you could have had better visibility of when things started to go…
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