Those who know me, know that I’m a fierce advocate of project management and have strong opinions on how the profession needs to evolve and adapt to remain relevant and continue to deliver value in today’s market.
I’m a project management specialist who has been leading PMOs for the past 10 years after starting out as a consulting project manager, eight years prior. I started off in outsource call center operations, and then I moved into federal and state education accountability program management for the State of Georgia and finally into the consumer and consumer/B2B product space across a variety of industries.
I’m active in both the PMI and Agile Alliance communities as a mentor, reviewer, speaker, writer and advocate.
The catalyst for creating this 10-part series is two-fold:
1. Recently, Marty Cagan (someone with whom I’ve worked and whose product-based approach I 100% agree with) published a blog post called “Revenge of the PMO.” Let’s just say I had a small opinion about how he was equating ALL PMOs with SAFe which generated an email exchange about PMOs in general that I believe needs to be shared more broadly (Marty did allude to some of it in his FAQ follow-up).
2. When I first started learning about agile ways of working as a PMO Director, I went through a major change and learning curve, and I found that there are not many resources available for PMO Directors who want to run a strong, value enabling PMO. There are plenty of resources for the product managers, engineers, testers and individual project managers, but not how the PMO needs to evolve, and more importantly, how I could better support my team of project managers and non-tech executives (CFO, Head of HR, etc).
This series of posts is to help fill that gap with my learnings (both the successes and mistakes) over the last ten years so that others can benefit. I’ll point to tactical resources like job descriptions, what to do if you run an enterprise (company-wide) PMO and plenty of curated videos, readings and other items I found helpful along the way. I’ll also share flexible approaches to staff assignment that can be adapted for the customers of your PMO’s services.
If you have any questions/comments/suggestions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
Next: My Story
Series Posts (link to all)
- My Story
- Product-Based vs. Project-Based Work
- Thoughts on the evolution to product-based teams in 10 Steps
- Other Activities to Support the Transition to Product-Based Teams
- Functional Managers (yes, PMO Director, you are a Functional Manager)
- The Role of the Project Manager
- Program and Portfolio Management
- Budgeting and Capitalization
- Final Thoughts on Organization Awareness and the Enterprise PMO
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