It’s the beginning of a new year, and that’s the perfect time to be thinking about what you’d like to approach differently this year. Not sure where to start? We’ve got some suggestions for you. Here are five resolutions for your PMO that you can apply this year.
Traditionally, New Year’s resolutions are goals we set for ourselves personally. They are often about bettering ourselves, so you might resolve to spend more time exercising or to eat more healthily. But why not set some resolutions for your PMO? There’s plenty of opportunity to be had bettering the way you work on projects.
1. To Develop Project Managers
Project managers are at the heart of your delivery capability. If you didn’t have them, you wouldn’t be able to get as much change delivered throughout the organization.
When was the last time your project managers went through any soft skills training? You might have offered them technical training in the last 12months, perhaps to support the rollout of new software tools. But project management takes more than that. In particular, a core trend that shows no sign of abating is the need for stronger leadership.
Managing projects is a tough job. Resolve to invest in the people who are doing it for you. Developing project management leadership skills is a great way of improving your project success rates and improving morale. Staff who feel invested in and supported are more likely to stay in your organization, reducing churn and minimizing recruitment costs.
2. To Create Deeper Analytics
Making project success repeatable and predictable relies on having project intelligence. However, too many project teams stick to the basic reports provided by their project management tools. Adding a powerful reporting engine like Adrega PI gives you much more flexibility.
There’s so much information stored within your enterprise project management software. But you have to be able to get it out. Make the most of the knowledge you already have this year by resolving to learn more about how to create intelligent reports with consolidated, professional reporting.
3. To Take a Risk Management Maturity Assessment
How good are you really at managing risk in the business? Resolve to take a risk management maturity assessment and find out.
The results can be illuminating. You might not be as good as you think in some areas, but you may be more mature than you expect in others. Stop guessing about what your risk management improvement plans should be and use a proven method to identify areas for development.
Our Risk Management Maturity Assessment® is a structured framework that looks at six critical areas of your risk environment. Once the assessment is complete you’ll understand exactly where you are on your journey to a mature risk management culture, and what you need to do to continue to move in the right direction.
Maturity assessments across all elements of your PMO give you useful information and save you time. It’s often difficult to assess yourself accurately because you’re too close to the operational challenges and successes of your team. An outsider’s view gives you honest feedback. You’ll be able to take significant leaps forward because you’ll know exactly what to focus on next to give you the best return.
4. To Introduce a New PMO Service
OK, so this one isn’t so much of a resolution as something you should have on your PMO roadmap for the coming year.
What new services are you going to add to the PMO? How are you going to build on your success of the past 12 months and become even more useful to the organization? Here are some suggestions of services you could consider adding to your PMO toolkit if you don’t already offer them:
- Project peer reviews or project auditing
- Coaching and mentoring
- Sponsor and executive training
- Workshop facilitation
- New document templates
- Enterprise risk management
- Deploying project management methods, standards and tools to parts of the business that don’t currently use them
- Supporting project managers with certification and developing career roadmaps
- Improving or introducing methods to forecast resource allocation and manage the pipeline of new projects.
Look back at the feedback you received and see if there are any common themes for topics or services that the business would like you to offer. That’s a good place to start.
5. To Learn the Advanced Functionality In PMO Tools
How much of your PMO software do you really use? We often speak to clients who are managing perfectly well with the software, but know they aren’t using it to its full capacity.
Enterprise project management tools like Primavera P6 are hugely powerful. If you can learn a few of the advanced features, you can supercharge the way you produce dashboards, share information and schedule projects. You can stay on top of changing schedules, deal with uncertainty and feel more confident about the risk profile of your project portfolio. But you have to know how to use the tool to get the most out of it.
Often, the super users who were initially trained and understood the full power of the tool have moved on to different roles, sometimes in new companies. If there hasn’t been adequate knowledge transfer to the new team members, some of that organizational knowledge is lost.
Resolve to boost your team’s skill in using the tools they already have by providing them with a quick day of knowledge sharing, coaching or an online training course that targets things they don’t already know. You might be surprised at how much more productive they can be with a little support.
Resolutions only work if you keep them. Whatever resolutions for your PMO you set and for your team this year, write them down and track your progress against them. It’s the only way you’ll be able to see progress when another year has passed.