It’s that wonderful time of year again… No not Christmas… it’s time to plan for next year! For PMO practitioners it is time to reaffirm the direction, select focus areas and finalise budgets for how to best support project, programme and portfolio delivery in 2023.  Let´s talk about PMO Planning for 2023.

2023 is set to be a year of a lot of change, uncertainty and turmoil in all areas, from financials to politics to supply chain challenges. Effective PPM delivery will be key for many organisations and as PMO practitioners we need to make sure all our customers have what they need to select, plan, deliver and close projects to ultimately realise the benefits from them.

How we structure our upcoming activities, should always stem from the basics. And for that, we turn to our PMO Principles. This series will take you through bringing each principle to life in your 2023 planning.

PMO Principle 1: Customer Focused

Does your PMO know who its Customers are? As a service provider, we should take the time to understand who our Customers are and what they need – our version of the PMO after all may well be different to theirs!

Knowing who your Customers are is a good sign and probably means you have already established a positive dialogue with them. But if you struggle to articulate what they want or need it could mean disaster as you provide services that they might not find valuable.

Value is very subjective. We speak about value throughout the Wellingtone PMO Practitioner course because it is intrinsic to why PMOs succeed or fail to be seen as partners to the Business.

Your plan for 2023:

  1. Identify who your Customers are, and create groups so that you can manage communication with them and ensure it is focused on what they want to hear about
  2. Spend some time with them to gather their views on the PMO and gather feedback – identify any pain points they are feeling when considering how they and their teams interact with projects and the PMO
  3. Review your service catalogue to ensure that the services you are offering directly align with the pain points and needs that you have identified

Why you should do this:

  • Although all services that PMOs can offer will add some value to the Customers, some are more valuable than others.

EXAMPLE

Developing and maintaining Project Management methods and standards is always considered a critical part of the PMO remit. However, when considered through the context of the organisation it may not be as valuable as you think. An organisation that has professional project managers will find less value in developing new ways of working as the professionals will continue to do what they know, even if the PMO doesn’t do anything to the processes that exist. The other perspective is in an organisation where everyone is an accidental project manager with no formal training or experience, where developing ways of working will add enormous value to the delivery teams.

  • Doing this helps to align the PMO roadmap and aspirations to the maturity and real issues faced by your Customers, and may even provide a healthy reality check as to whether the PMO is moving too fast or in the wrong direction.
  • It creates an opportunity to review the PMO service catalogue to ensure that any ad-hoc or ‘vanity’ work that has crept in can be assessed, reviewed, and either removed or structured.
  • This point in time provides a perfect opportunity to revisit the benefits of each service from a Customer, team, process, and value perspective.
  • It enables the team to re-ignite the passion for the Customer by ensuring that existing relationships continue to be fruitful, and new relationships start on the right foot.

How you should do this:

The Wellingtone PMO 3D service provides an opportunity to Define, Design the PMO to get ready to Deliver value-adding services. You can check out the details of what’s included on our website.

In Summary

Throughout this blog series, we will cover the four remaining PMO Principles one at a time, providing the what and the why.

The Customer has to be at the heart of every PMO. That is not to say however that because we know what they want, they are going to get it!

We have to ensure that we take a pragmatic view to ensure that we read between the lines to provide them with what they actually need to deliver beneficial change for the organisation.

Either way, the Customer is key to your PMO future, so keep them in mind at all times.