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What Does It Take to be PMO of the Year?
| At the recently completed PMO Symposium®, the winner of the 2018 PMO of the Year Award was announced. You may wonder what were the award-winning traits of the winner. The December PM Network® spells out why the project management office for Australian telecom Telstra was selected for this honor. Turning back the hands of time, back in 2012 Telstra did a capital project audit and found out that nearly a third of the company’s strategic project investments were not meeting goals. So the company launched a PMO that year, focused on strategic planning and delivery. Since the founding, the PMO has provided structure and oversight to all major capital projects. The C-suite enthusiastically backs the efforts of the PMO, which has a full-time staff of 24 who oversee more than 1,800 project managers and 1,265 projects worldwide. The PMO comes with power. Executive leaders within the PMO can hold business unit leaders accountable for delivering their projects’ benefits—and can influence shutdowns of projects that don’t deliver. They can also issue a “strong recommendation for change.” Telstra leaders say the PMO’s biggest success has been bringing discipline to the company’s capital spend. The company has the largest capital expenditure budget in Australia. Discipline is grounded by a focus on key performance indicators. Another benefit of the company’s PMO is its success in forging a culture of project excellence through talent development and training. Sponsors and key stakeholders are not overlooked—there is training for them as well. Do you know of a PMO that deserves this honor and recognition? Be sure to nominate that PMO for the 2019 PMO of the Year Award. |
An Empowering PMO of the Year
| PMO naysayers think that PMOs are bureaucratic entities requiring documentation tasks that take away from project teams’ previous time. We’d like to think that PMOs actually empower staff to do more for their stakeholders—in other words, bring value to their organizations. The best of these PMOs are finalists for PMO of the Year. At PMI’s annual PMO Symposium®, the PMO of the Year winner was announced: Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Read all about this PMO in December PM Network. The goal of CAMH’s PMO when it was formed in 2012 was to develop more efficient and effective ways to serve patients. The PMO’s first project was to streamline 30 different patient referral forms into one access point—in other words, less documentation. The PMO quickly became a place to get things done across the organization. Its role in centralizing communication has streamlined the adoption of new tools and processes. The PMO further creates value by making sure new initiatives align with CAMH’s strategic plan. New projects must have descriptions of expected benefits. While the PMO isn’t directly touching the patients and their families at Canada’s largest mental health and addiction teaching hospital, the work of the PMO is definitely improving the care they receive. Please share in the comments ways your organization’s PMO delivers value and supports stakeholders. |