Transform Your PMO into a Strategic Business Function: The BIG Opportunity for PMO

Article prepared by:

David Dunning – lead author, Business Integrated Governance

On the 22nd November the The House of PMO hosted a morning workshop aimed at enabling PMO / P3 Professionals to step into the gap between strategy and delivery.

Background

According to a recent report from the House of PMO, "The prize for organisations who have established PMO as a business function is the ability to bridge the strategy formulation to execution gap.". I could not agree more!

However, the ceiling for a PMO within a business can be seen as portfolio of change and / or customer projects. BUT - our business purpose and related strategy ALSO rely upon BAU performance (selling, delivering, finance etc.) and value creation (assets / products) - NOT JUST achieving change. Hence, to bridge the strategy formulation / execution gap, organisations must look at more than an enterprise PMO and the Change Portfolio. Right?

At our previous strategy delivery events , delegates have told us there is a gap between strategy and delivery. At the recent APM PMO Conference, when asked who knew who supported the connection of strategy to delivery in their organisation - no one knew.

So while an organisation might have a PMO which gets involved in the change portfolio definition - where connections from strategic objectives to projects / programmes are established - WHO is:

- supporting parallel activity in business units / product groups?

- overseeing of how cross functional dependency / accountability works and how priorities are interpreted and achieved?

What is Covered

1. Opening and Introductions

2. PMO as a Business Function

3. Key Discussion Questions

4. Defining Strategy Delivery and PMO Scope

5. Key Questions to Explore

6. Introduction to Business Integrated Governance (BIG)

7. Portfolio Management Redefined

8. BIG’s Role in Strategic Accountability

9. PMO as a Strategy Delivery Function

10. Conclusion and Reflections

This agenda guides participants through a structured exploration of PMO alignment with strategic delivery, emphasizing practical applications and actionable takeaways.

Who should be interested in this topic?

PMO Leaders who are struggling to support strategic projects and programmes
PMO Directors to cannot see how strategy is driving change or how projects are enabling strategy
Governance Professionals who want to see effective decision making, application of policy and process to strategy delivery
Operations and finance directors who want to see funds / resources deployed in line with strategic priorities
Strategic leadership who want to see effective strategy delivery

More stakeholder profiles here

After the event, we expect you will fully understand the needs of a Strategy Delivery Support Function - and how a PMO can become that.

What next?

Support with awareness of Strategy Delivery issues - event report and recording.
Core BIG Presentation - YouTube recordings
How to use BIG Resources - event report and recording

We suggest asking us to support a .First Steps Conversation which would provide you with a PowerPoint template we would complete at a 2-3 hour meeting to help get you started.

Trigger Moments - do you have a burning platform or a vision of paradise which will engage your colleagues to start a BIG Journey? Lets discuss!
How to build consensus on current state, and agree to do "something" - lets go through your pains and think about the relevant solution components to respond to them with
Vision - what would a simple illustration of this look like - lets mock up an example you can use
Roadmap - lets leverage the BIG BoK and mock up an example you can use

Clearly - in the space of an our or two, this is not going to provide the basis for an outline business case - but it possibly gets you a sponsor and funding to make one...

Please Contact us if you would like to do this.

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