The Execs Look Back @PMOSym: Top Takeaways

November 13, 2019 | by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

I had the opportunity yesterday to chat with those of our executive team who attended the 2019 PMO Symposium. Here's a recap of their top insights and takeaways from what they all agreed was "a very impressive conference," "the best I've ever attended," and "much more engaging" than previous years.

CEO J. Kent Crawford both presented a session, "The Top Three PMO Pain Points: Solutions to Your Toughest Issues," and facilitated a Knowledge Hub session, "Working with the C-Suite to Enable Effective Sponsorship of Strategic Initiatives." He praised the Symposium planners for "stepping up thier game" on the quality of keynote speakers. In particular,  Hal Gregerson from the MIT Leadership Center had a thought-provoking and useful presentation on the value of asking questions. Too often, when we are problem-solving, we try to go straight to a list of solutions. With a powerful exercise during the session, he showed us how simply asking questions can generate new ideas and possibilities to even our most challenging issues.

Kent had a hands-on example of the power of asking good questions during his Knowledge Hub session. He came prepared to involve the participants with a list of questions:

"We never made it to the last two questions," Kent says, "because the group was so engaged in discussion that we ran out of time. I am always impressed by the insight and experience of the folks we meet at the PMO Symposium. I learn as much from them as I teach." In particular, Kent mentioned the contributions of one of the PMO leaders from PMO of the Year Award finalist McDonalds.

Another key takeaway, for Kent, was gratitude for the many positive responses he had from attendees at his sessions. One fellow presenter shared that he had been instrumental in her going into project management; another said he had hoped to get ten takeaways from the confrence, and got three in the first hour from Kent's presentation. "It's tremendously gratifying to hear that your work has had a positive impact on others," Kent said.

Our President, Bruce Miller, noted the energy that was generated by the transformation underway within PMI itself. "PMI is taking a more strategic view on the project economy," he said, listing their strategic partnership with TED, the purchase of Disciplined Agile to become a content and thought leader in Agile, and major shifts in the REP Program, moving toward PMI-provided content and a licensing fee for all providers. Bruce, who formerly worked with the Xavier University Leadership Center, saw a strong leadership theme reflected across many of the keynotes and presentations: "Leadership themes addressed innovation, change, speed and flexibility.  These resonated with me and our team, as all four of these are ways in which PM Solutions has responded quickly to engage and respond to current and new clients’ needs the past two years."

The highlight of his conference, though, was the session co-presented with Michele Graham, representing our client Preferred Mutual. We had a very engaging discussion with our audience learning and listening to Preferred Mutual’s story, 'Bold EPMO  Value Improvement Through Process Agility and Innovation.'  Agile integration, having a seat at the strategy table, not being afraid to make mistakes as innovative ideas are tried and piloted, and how to plan for and measure benefits realization kept Michele and I in conversations after our session and with other participants throughout the remainder of the week. Much of the discussion focused on PMO maturity toward high-performing PMOs and organizations moving from EPMOs to Strategy Project Offices or Strategy Transformation Offices, clearly showing the PMO’s impact in successfully implementing strategy."

Meanwhile, Janet Burns, Director, PM Solutions noticed another theme: "Agile is King (or Queen!). Many of the presentations were on some form of Agile, either the discipline itself or how it will impact the PMO, teams, and the workforce; several sessions, echoling our recent research, focused on how to make agile and traditional methods work together. Scott Ambler, a founder and now Chief Scientist of Disciplined Agile, stressed that 'Successful agile organizations take responsibility for their own agility,' another way of underlining the important role of the PMO in promoting this key organizational change.

On the less-inspirational side, Janet noted that PMO challenges seem to remain pretty much the same. In the session on  "Jumpstarting your PMO" folks shared their challenges, and most of them were all-too-familiar from our own PMO research studies:

• Educating the executive level
• Organizational alignment of the PMO
• Governance
• No ownership of the PMO
• Too many projects
• Finding the right tool(s)
• Proving value
• Lots of PMOs have had failed starts.

When PMO challenges remain static even though the marketplace, the tools, and the methods are changing rapidly, it may be time to try new strategies for evolving the PMO! We'll be interested to see how this dynamic organizational structure adapts moving forward ... at next year's PMO Symposium.

Editor's note: Don't miss Matt Crawford's day-by-day overview of the highlights of the conference! Start here.

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About the Author

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin is editor-in-chief for PM Solutions Research, and the author, co-author and editor of over twenty books on project management, including the 2007 PMI Literature Award winner, The AMA Handbook of Project Management, Second Edition.

View Posts by Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin

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