PMI Global Summit: Learning and Networking on Day 2

Day 2 was another exciting day of learning and networking. 

I attended Joe Campa’s session, Mastering the PMO Landscape, discussing the journey that Ontario Power Generation has taken to improve PMO capabilities.  OPG focused on Elevating their PMO through a value-focused and customer-centric mindset. 50% of PMOs shut down within the first 4 years of launching, so Joe was excited to share the OPG journey to help other PMO leaders.  

• 2016 – Launched the effort to improve project delivery
• 201 7– Partnered with PM Solutions to perform a PM Maturity Assessment and develop an improvement roadmap
• 2018-19 – Implement governance and training
• 2019-20 – Implementation of the roadmap including portfolio governance and change champions
• 2021 – Continuous Improvement efforts, self-assessments and a re-assessment with PM Solutions.  Also launched the construction COE
• 2022-23 – Recognition: PMO of the year finalist
• 2023-24 – Utility industry leaders in PMO capabilities
• 2024 and beyond – Continued focus on customer-centric and implementing efficiencies through AI.  Plan to do a re-assessment within the next 2 years to continue to improve.

Side note: he referenced the PMOGA PMO Value Ring.  He didn’t reference PM Solutions directly, but talked about a third-party vendor for the assessments: that was us! (Read our case study about the work we performed at OPG.)

The keynote of the day was given by Laurita Cheng, founder of Aubot, AIpoly and Robogals.  She shared her journey from a small town in Australia to following her passion for entrepreneurship and engineering to solve challenges for the underserved.  Aubot created Teleport, a telepresence robot which allows you to visit somewhere or someone in a mobile video-conferencing experience.  Aipoly is an app that uses artificial intelligence to identify objects, text, colors, and nature in real-time to assist vision impaired individuals. Robogals is a global student run organization that aims to inspire and empower young women to consider studying engineering and related fields.  One of her key learnings is to create specific three-month goals to break bigger goals down into shorter sprints, which are tracked and adjusted based on learning at the end of each three-month sprint.

I'll be back at work by the time you read this blog, as usual after a conference, with lists, notes, ideas and the sense of possibility that new learning brings. I hope everyone had as great an experience as I did. Let us know what ideas were sparked for you .... and if we can help you make them a reality in 2025.