PMOs are Leading Change and More
Not only do leaders think the PMO should play an important role, but in high-performing organizations, that is already happening.
Panel discussions at the PMO Symposium give me writer's cramp! It's hard to take notes fast enough, especially when confronted with an array of highly knowledgeable practitioners. The panelists were:
- Melissa Eckers, Accenture
- Brian Murphy, CapGemini
- Jan Musil, SAP
- Noel Smyth, JP Morgan
The upshot?
The PMO is evolving and changing; no longer merely tactical, its future is becoming more strategic. None of this was news to us, of course; our research studies showed this happening over the past three to five years. However, I am stoked to hear highly placed execs from major companies jump on this bandwagon! Their consensus on what they call the "NextGen PMO" (what our folks have often referred to as "The Strategy Execution Office") is that there are three primary steps to establishing a PMO that drives strategic execution:
- Culture of leadership
- Retool / reskill project leader skills
- Evolve delivery metrics to link to strategic objectives
A statistic that I did not catch the source citation for, but which is compelling:
- 90% of leaders think the PMO plays a key role in future strategy delivery and project outcomes
Compare this to the slide below, which I snagged from my colleague Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin's PMI Conference presentation, which detailed the findings from our 2017 Strategy Execution Processes Benchmark study:
From these statistics, you can see that not only do leaders think the PMO should play an important role, but in high-performing organizations, that is already happening. This is no surprise, since over the past decade, our State of the PMO studies have shown an increasing trend toward the involvement of the PMO at the strategic level.
In discussing the factors that compel the PMO to evolve (spoiler alert: our new white paper on The Evolving PMO is due out next week), the panel threw out several possible factors:
- PMO growth is flat (our State of the PMO studies largely confirm this, with about 85% of companies reporting that they have PMOs, which has only budged by a percentage point or two over the past five years)
- PMOs are not changing fast enough to meet business needs, and
- Less than one-third of PMOs show tangible results.
To this last item, I just want to say: yes, and that may be because the performance measurement piece of the puzzle is still not being put in place. Our research seems to indicate that, while PMOs deliver all kinds of important value-adds to organizations, they are not that skilled at measuring the value they contribute ... or at communicating it to the C-level, which is in practice the same thing. According to our strategy execution research, performance measurement is an area where even high-performing companies have deficits.
If there's a call to action here, it's "don't wait for the PMO's value to be questioned: jump in and start documenting and communicating it." There's hunger for PMO value at the top: feed that tiger!
- Understanding PMaaS-Part 2
- When You Needed Results Yesterday: Understanding the Role of Project Management as a Service (PMaaS)
- PMaaS and Organizational Performance, Then and Now
- (More) Changing Approaches to Project Management
- What We Mean When We Say PM as a Service
- A Festively Decorated Big Box of …. What Now?!
- Jazzed Up About Project Management and AI
- Live from Atlanta ... People, Ideas and More, Part 2
- Live from Atlanta ... People, Ideas and More
- Value Delivery Skills Webinar Attendees Had Questions: Here Are Some Answers
- Webinar Alert: Project Management Skills for Value Delivery Research Overview
- Seven Actions for the Adaptive Organization
- PMO Staff vs PMO Leaders: Realism or Pessimism?
- High Performers Value These Skills
- PM Skills Benchmark Study: Your Second Chance to Participate
- New Research Launch: Project Management Skills for Value Delivery
- Managing Projects…Or Delivering Value? Eric Foss’s Challenge to Project Managers
- A Look Forward, With Hope and Confidence
- Some Thoughts About Governance, PMOs and the Thinking Project Manager
- PMO of the Year Finalist Ontario Power Generation
- The Future is Already Here for These PMOs
- State of the PMO Research Webinar – Your Questions, Answered: Part 2
- State of the PMO Research Webinar – Your Questions, Answered: Part 1
- Will A.I. Kill the PMO? Part 3 in Our A.I. in PM Series
- PMO Research Reveal: What You'll Learn in This Week's Webinar
- The Evolution of the Enterprise PMO: What Comes Next?
- Think Your Business Is Too Small for a PMO? Think Again.
- The Enterprise PMO Delivers
- PMOs: New Research Shows Benefits Outweigh Cost
- The PMO at 20: New Research Findings Released
Related Posts:
Tags:
(2 votes. Average: 5.0 out of 5)
1 Comment on The PMO Symposium: Conference Review Part 2
Popular Posts
- The Project Management Maturity Model … Now with Agile/Adaptive Assessment!
- PM Solutions Celebrates 25 Years of Project Management Excellence
- Managing Project Managers Within and Outside the PMO
Popular Categories
- Agile or Adaptive PM (5)
- Culture & Change Management (75)
- Project & Program Management (82)
- Portfolio Management (50)
- Project Management Office (PMO) (107)
- Project Management Research (50)
- Resource Optimization (26)
search blog:
Sign up for PM Solutions'
Insights eNewsletter
Delivered every other month in addition to periodic research, white papers, and news alerts.
Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin says:
Hey, Johanna, thanks for the mention. This topic also reminds me of one of the questions that was asked in my PMI Conference session. The attendee’s company had actually abolished the PMO, moving many functions up to the C-level, with the objective of adding agility and speed to strategy execution. He asked me if I had seen this in other companies. I researched it a bit and it does seem to be among the trends pertaining to “the evolving PMO”. My thought is ... it doesn’t matter what we call it, just so long as the processes are in place and well managed!
Posted on November 16, 2018 at 4:24 pm