Evolve Your PMO to an Enterprise Demand Management Office

Course Overview

Is your PMO performing at the highest possible level? A decade ago, Kent Crawford created the term Strategic Project Office in his award-winning book, The Strategic Project Office: A Guide to Improving Organizational Performance. Since then, the PMO has changed dramatically, as thousands of organizations have implemented this cultural remake to maximize the business benefits of project and program management. Today, successful PMOs, once confined primarily to IT departments, are expanding into other organizational business units or evolving into Enterprise PMOs. From decades of working with corporate leadership, Kent will share how your PMO can evolve into a highly valued enterprise asset, balancing strategy execution, governance and resource demand. Interweaving the latest concepts of governance, portfolio management, resource optimization, and organizational performance measurement, this class helps you implement what your corporate leadership needs and expects from your PMO.

Key Outcomes

Upon completion of this course, students will be able to:

• State the role of the Strategic PMO
• Define the concept of “demand management”
• Identify how to align the Strategic PMO with your organization’s business needs
• Analyze the governance contributions from various levels of the organization
• Identify how an effective PMO will add business value
• Explain ways to measure the effectiveness of the Strategic PMO

Course Outline

Module 1:  Introduction – Course Overview

• Discuss 2010 survey findings and compare them to your own organization’s PMO progress
• Describe the three key factors that are playing major roles in the current state of the PMO
• Define the top 10 PMO Functions
• Discuss how the PMO adds value to an organization

Module 2:  The Strategic PMO

• Identify how the Demand Management life cycle fits into the PMO
• Identify different PMO types and placement within an organization
• Describe the evolving purpose and functions of the PMO
• List the top five strategic PMO success criteria
• Make the case for the PMO as a “Demand Management Office”
• Understand how the PMO adds business value

Module 3:  PMO Governance

• Provide a definition of governance
• Identify governance roles and responsibilities
• Articulate the leadership commitment necessary for governance
• Identify successful strategies to obtain buy-in for governance processes

Module 4:  Portfolio Management

• Identify the top challenges and priorities around resource optimization
• Recognize the top 10 resource management challenges
• Explain 3 strategies to overcome some of the top resource management challenges
• Identify some of the issues or fallout that result from poor resource utilization

Module 5:  Resource Demand and Optimization

• Describe how to perform portfolio evaluation and measurement
• Address the challenges of monitoring portfolio performance
• Describe the operations of the portfolio review board
• List at least 5 criteria that could be used for portfolio prioritization
• Explain the Portfolio Management Lifecycle
• Build a best practices Portfolio Management process

Module 6:  Performance Measurement

• Articulate the basic principles and terminology of measurement
• Explain how a PM Performance Measurement System correlates to the business impact of implementing projects
• Establish a good set of project management performance measures
• Use measurement to link PMO and project management gains to organizational improvements that speak to the executive level

Module 7:  Best Practices

• Explain key change management requirements and their application to project environments
• Utilize examples of successful practices from award-winning PMOs
• Describe best practices to address SPO critical success factors
• Identify similarities in practices for best performing organizations and their PMO strategies

Module 8:  A Plan of Action

• Measure project management maturity in your organization
• Determine the next steps in expanding your PMO
• Identify the most important business benefits of a Strategic Project Office