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Project Portfolio Management

Your PMO at Hyperspeed [On-Demand Webinar]

Part 1: Three ways to deliver value to the business

Published By Elsa Dithmer
Your PMO at Hyperspeed [On-Demand Webinar]

Call it a severe case of digital disruption. Today’s project and program management offices (PMOs) are not only being tasked to work at hyper speed, they are also being asked to balance somewhat contradictory objectives.

Traditionally, the PMO has focused on bringing structure, methodology, process, and governance to the position. Today, they must shift gears and focus on becoming more scalable and flexible to create real business value. As always – they should be delivering projects on time and on budget.

What’s driving this need for speed? Today’s customers are adopting new technology at faster rates than ever before, bringing with them higher expectations about their digital experience. As a result, 33 percent of organizations are investing in the public cloud to help power their need to move faster. PMOs must ensure that the organization can quickly deploy features and software to customers and employees.

In addition, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) are playing their own significant role, sucking up 40 percent of global investment. Consider this stat: 75 percent of healthcare consumers in North America want digital access to healthcare providers and millennials would rather buy insurance digitally than through an insurance agent.

Are you poised to deliver value at warp speed? I invite you to listen to the on-demand webinar featuring Margo Visitacion, VP, Principal Analyst, at Forrester Research and Linda Roach, Director or Solutions Marketing at Planview. During the webinar, Your PMO @ Hyperspeed, they explore the skills, tools, and techniques required for today’s PMO.

Your PMO at Hyperspeed

What does it take to be a digitally focused PMO? Today’s PMOs must adapt to new approaches, develop new skills, and leverage automation to support agile and hybrid planning and delivery cycles. Your top three priorities should be to grow revenue, improve the customer experience, and improve products and services – all while getting things out faster. One result of this is a flattening of the organizations as developers become less centralized in IT organizations and more dispersed, rolling into the line-of-business and supplying critical business knowledge.

Inevitably, this begs the question: Is the PMO at risk? In fact, studies point to developers being frustrated that PMOs lack agile experience. Failing to develop project managers is also crucial if the PMO wants to succeed. According to Forrester, 96 percent of large organizations have PMOs and 49 percent are reporting to the C-Level. In fact, more and more organizations are becoming more agile – moving past the repeatable stage to build innovative solutions by focusing on the outcomes. The PMOs who are successful in digital transformation have begun to adopt new roles and responsibilities to drive the right approaches to deliver the necessary business value.

Put simply, PMOs should focus on these key areas:

  1. Collaborative planning by providing the vision to better define the outcomes. This empowers teams to figure out the correct outcomes.
  2. Enable teams by providing guidance, not rigid methodology, for strategic themes and coaching for cross-functional teams. High-performing PMOs should be less worried about checking boxes than how to move the needle.
  3. Communication dependency management by identifying constraints to break down the walls and more effectively facilitate portfolio management.

In addition, PMOs are beginning to embrace agile DevOps so they can deliver value based on the capacity and flow of the portfolio. As organizations scale in maturity toward continuous planning, they can move from being tactical (dates, time sheets, and budget) to become more strategic (leverage trends, relationships, and risk management.) This all means you can begin to invest in skills and roles and stop planning the mechanics of delivering projects to identify the right results.

I encourage you to listen to the webcast, Margo Visitation and Linda Roach provide some fantastic commentary and conversation around this topic. Then, be sure to read part 2 of this series, “How Planview Can Enable Your PMO at Hyper-speed,” and register for the on-demand webinar, Your PMO @ Hyperspeed today. If you are interested in learning how Planview can enable your PMO @Hyperspeed watch Part 2 of the on demand webinarHow Planview can enable your PMO @ Hyper-Speed

 

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Written by Elsa Dithmer

Elsa Dithmer graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a BA in Spanish and Portuguese. She is a passionate and well-rounded marketing professional that always brings an energetic, creative, and anything-is-possible attitude to demand driving, nurturing, and retention marketing programs. Currently focused on programs for Innotas by Planview.