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Can We Be That PMO? Deliver What Business Leaders Want and Need

Video series: Strategies to help you get started

Published By Carina Hatfield
Can We Be That PMO? Deliver What Business Leaders Want and Need

Are you tired of unplanned work constantly taking priority and not being able to effectively plan across everything the business wants and the organization needs to support? Do you wish that you had a portfolio management with investment planning tool so you could contribute to the business more effectively instead of just putting out fires? Or maybe you’re not that eager to wait around for an overwhelming to-do list.

Watch “Facing the Challenges of Today’s PMO” and “Focus on Values and Outcomes” and discover why using portfolio management with investment planning can give the PMO a seat at the table with the business leader to evaluate and prioritize what investments should be made to make decisions that drive the business forward. Understand that the value of the PMO participating in “what should be done” is that you can help determine the “when it can be delivered” in the context of priorities in order to manage capacity and ensure the success of desired outcomes.

But maybe you’re not fully convinced or confident enough to launch yourself into the fray.

Take a deeper dive into how you can overcome some of these inherent PMO challenges. As an experienced Planview Product Manager, I’ve seen how easy it is to wind up on the receiving end of the planning cycle, which is not much fun.

Be the PMO who prioritizes and drives the portfolio. Here’s a peek at some of the strategies I outline in the video for delivering what business leaders really want:

  • Partnership development. Bring the CIO and the CFO into conversations on decision-making criteria. Then, you can become the central access point to gather key information for both operations and finance.
  • Leverage the information you’re already collecting. Use it to evaluate across business units project value, risk of not doing the project, likelihood of success, regulatory risks, accepting high level estimates early on and updating estimates based on what has been throughout the project,
  • Re-think being responsible for reporting on what’s already happened – use the portfolio to plan for the business.
  • Re-frame the way you think, report, and even speak about your current projects around business drivers, technology, and value so the PMO can drive future decisions.

It is important to remember that this is also in the name of creating an adaptable organization that focuses on the highest priorities and isn’t taken over by unplanned work, to solve the biggest challenge likely facing your organization –over-committed resources. Keep in mind that an IT/PMO that thinks about the capacity plan, will gain the trust of the business. When you gain that trust, the interesting conversations can begin… making real trade-off decisions while ensuring resources are focused on creating the highest value to the company.

Watch the video “Can we #BethatPMO” to learn how to better evaluate tradeoffs before decisions are made or watch the complete video series on YouTube.

Video: Can we #BeThatPMO?

#BeThatPMO Video Series

I’d like to hear from you. Are these videos helpful? What are you currently doing to make sure the PMO is bringing value to the business? What questions do you have about portfolio management with investment planning? Share by leaving a comment below.

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Written by Carina Hatfield Director, Product Management

Carina Hatfield always has a plan. Throughout the years, she has improved her ability to respond and re-prioritize for new ideas and unplanned events. She followed her original plan of becoming a CPA going into budgeting, forecasting, and strategic planning until a new idea was prioritized and she took on the opportunity to join Planview. After six years of implementing Planview Enterprise to help organizations improve their strategic, forecasting, and planning processes, Carina has taken that experience and applied it to her role in Product Management.