DPM – New Purpose of the PMO – August, 2024

Olivia Montgomery: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining Gartner. I was a project manager, worked my way up, started leading my own PO, and I just saw how effective it was. We just were able to move so much faster, get prioritizations so that everything’s not a priority, actually stack rank everything. I saw the value. And then I, you see stuff every now and again, that’s like the death of the PMO is coming.

And I, I adamantly feel that it’s not. So yeah, I pushed for this research and. I’m happy to be here talking about it.

Galen Low: I love that. Thank you for flying the flag. As someone who’s seen it work well before, I think you’re right. I think a lot of people have seen it work poorly. Uh, we’re gonna dive into that today.

Um, and I’m happy to have you here. But, next up is uh, Mr. Bruno Morgante. Uh, Bruno’s got over 20 years of experience leading PMOs in large, multinational conglomerates to help them consistently deliver business results, improve processes, and improve communities. cultivate successful teams, and manage large portfolios of concurrent projects.

[00:01:00] Uh, Bruno, you are a mentor, a speaker, and until recently, you were a PMO leader at a Fortune 500 company, and now you’re starting your own thing, which maybe is still a bit top secret, but I have to ask, what made you make that big change in your career?

Bruno Morgante: Well, Galen, you need to know a little bit of a background information here.

20 years ago, I had my career. My thing my own thing. I was organizing concerts with my best friend. Yes concerts. Yeah, and And, you know, we went on, it was great, we loved it, but after about six years we had to, we had to close it. But that was the moment in which I knew one day I was going to have my own thing again.

And over the past few years I have seen, you know, you know me, I’m in contact with project managers and expert PMs, PMO leaders in communities everywhere in the world, different companies, different industries. There is one thing that [00:02:00] strikes me every time, every time. It is the low, low level of project management knowledge out there and thinking about how much resources are wasted because of that, it is really something that we should, we should work on.

Plus being a coach and a mentor, I can see how many people out there need help and they need help with their careers, with their lives. So bringing these three things together, it is what? made me take the decision of starting my own thing.

Galen Low: I love that. I hope that new thing is like project management sponsors.

Because I’m bad at

Bruno Morgante: that. That would be good.

Galen Low: And last but not least is agency badass Lauren Selle. Lauren oversees enterprise portfolios and cross functional project teams at top agency Code Theory, focusing on mobile and web design and development. And Lauren, in addition to your high octane agency leadership role, you also churn out a full calendar of high value educational [00:03:00] content as a creator, you run a coaching business on the side, and you also manage one of the biggest projects of all, raising a toddler.

Oh, I have to ask, what would you do with an extra two hours in a week?

Lauren Selley: That’s a great question. It’s one that I ask myself quite frequently. I have realized over the years, though, that as many of us are guilty of, I had a tendency to say that I didn’t have enough time to do something, mostly when I was making an excuse because it wasn’t a big enough priority for me.

So, um, while the actual answer that you might expect might be go sleep a couple extra hours or sit in a room in silence. It really is that answer. Um, I do have a sewing machine that I’ve had sitting in a box since my birthday. I am trying to learn how to do my own alterations so I can save some time on that.

So that is, uh, something that I would like to prioritize as a new hobby that I can pick up.

Galen Low: Truly high octane. [00:04:00] And then I think maybe we should have a PM clothing line too. So PMO concerts, PMO merch. Um, yeah, we’re going to do this. Olivia on lead vocals.

Olivia Montgomery: I’m tone deaf. Y’all don’t want that.

Galen Low: We’re going to try anyways, PMO karaoke.

My clothing

Lauren Selley: wouldn’t be very great either.

Galen Low: Now we must do this. Okay, all right, I’ll get back on topic, I promise. Okay, let me do a little spiel to lead us in, because we are here to talk about The future of the ubiquitous project management office, endearingly referred to as the PMO. And most of us know this as a central body that oversees project delivery in an organization.

It’s usually the person or group tasked with bringing consistency to how projects are delivered, managing the 50, 000 foot view of all active and upcoming projects and gathering the knowledge data and lessons learned from successful and well, less successful projects. Some of us [00:05:00] also know it as a big pain in the behind, adding complexity to things that should be simple, stifling creativity, rigidly enforcing dated practices, and generally sticking their noses in other departments businesses.

Um, some organizations don’t even have a PMO anymore. They have opted for things like a strategic enablement office, um, and maybe a project management community of practice. But I have this hunch that the PMO could be on the brink of a rebirth, and here’s why. Project management as a skill, is on the rise.

But not every project is led by a trained project manager. Roles from specialists to executives are now expected to be able to deliver projects. And meanwhile, projects are more prevalent than ever, but they’re taking many different shapes and need to be tailored in their approach to fit their specific needs.

And in untrained hands, that only really adds risk. So whereas the PMO has in the past been seen simply as a governing body, Could it be that maybe it’s actually an [00:06:00] innovation hub for exploring new ways of delivering projects in a safe and hopefully unchaotic way? So that’s my theory. That’s what I’m here, uh, to find out and validate today, um, with my expert friends.

Um, and really just to lead off and kind of set the scene that I’d pick on Olivia, but also I want thoughts from everybody, but I’ll start with Olivia. Uh, from your perspective, do PMOs have a bad rap and why is the answer? Yes.

Olivia Montgomery: The answer is yes, in most cases. I think you touched on it a bit. The idea that a PMO, or any time that you’re introducing standardizations and best practices and policies and procedures, it gets really rigid pretty much immediately.

And I think people automatically think, Oh, this is it. Like, We’re going to have one template for everything, um, maybe two, if you’re feeling spicy. Um, and that’s it. They just default to that, that [00:07:00] rigid thinking of like, this is how it’s going to be. And that just doesn’t work. So they need to definitely be thinking about it as an innovation hub.

You absolutely need to be able to building in flexibility and adaptability into these policies and procedures. And then the other side I think we see a lot is maybe the wrong people getting promoted or hired into the PMO leadership role. Um, it could be somebody who is a very good project manager themselves.

Uh, maybe who’s really good at managing the individual project, but then when you put them in charge of the portfolio at the higher level, they lack that ability to kind of zoom out while still being able to zoom in or the opposite happens, uh, you can get, bring in a leader who is only good at the high level view and thinking and strategizing, and they’re not able to dive in.

And really connect and help and understand the pain points of the day to day project management. So we need a lot more dynamic leaders [00:08:00] that have that ability to zoom in and zoom out. I mean, you have, sometimes you have to do it hour by hour. And so I think identifying the right kind of people and talent to lead is important and changing the mindset to a much more flexible, adaptable, let’s get it done, not do it this way kind of mindset.

Galen Low: I love that. Like the people who understand that standardization doesn’t mean rigidity. Love that. Bruno, you’ve been leading PMOs a while. Like I’m imagining you fought that fight. I How have you kind of tried to educate folks about the fact that, yeah, the PMO isn’t just here, you know, to slap you on the wrist whenever you do something a bit out of the lines?

Bruno Morgante: Well, it’s a, it’s a difficult battle. It’s a difficult battle for a lot of, for a lot of PMO leaders out there. I think it’s, it’s important to see. how PMOs are [00:09:00] evolving into, and I have seen it over the past few years, of course, not all of them. Well, you have seen it also in the, in the comments about moving PMOs into, into a different, into a different place.

That might be the case. In, uh, in a nutshell, it’s not about having a rigidity and, uh, and structure only the all the concept of, uh, governance and control PMO, which is still is the picture for a lot of people when they think about PMO, when they hear PMO, that’s what they associate it with. It’s not the case anymore.

It’s about being, uh, in a position to enable projects to be successful. And, uh, Olivia mentioned adaptability as one of the, and it’s going to be one of the keywords that I’m sure we’re going to touch a lot in the next, uh, in the next few minutes.

Galen Low: Love that. I do want to come back to that in terms of things that you’re seeing.

Um, but I wanted to flip over first to agency land because Lauren and I are agency folks. [00:10:00] Um, and what I found, at least in my experience is that, uh, like sometimes agencies resist the word PMO and instead we gravitate towards other terms like delivery leadership or client services and the like, um, you know, all of which are fine.

Uh, but I’m wondering Lauren, from your perspective, like, do you think that’s just semantics? Is, has that been your experience? Um, and Is there maybe some kind of like allergic reaction to the idea of a PMO in agency culture?

Lauren Selley: I think there’s definitely some type of allergic reaction, but it’s pretty clear where it’s coming from.

And I’m curious, especially if you want to put it in the chat, like how many people really even knew or know what a PMO’s goals are? Because I know that for myself, even the first five or six years of my career, Uh, PMO or project management department were pretty much used interchangeably and no one ever really talked about what they were trying to achieve.

Uh, and I think that there is a big challenge with the stigma associated with what a [00:11:00] PMO does, right? You’re trying to align business projects with these business objectives and drive organizational success. If you had a group called the organizational success team, do you think anyone would object to it?

Right. Versus, Oh, a PMO office. They’re like, Oh, you know, kind of like Olivia said, process very rigid can only go one way. Um, agency life is very hustle harder. Let’s go fast, fast, fast. And in the last 10 or so years with the rise of agile and the popularity of the term agile, Everyone sees this as this big buzzword.

We need to be adaptable. We need to be, um, able to move quickly. We need to be able to change quickly. And they associate PMOs with process and they see process as the enemy of the ability to move. Fast, which is actually very ironic because the ability to put in place repeatable, successful delivery practices, or, you know, the things that you need to be able to manage [00:12:00] a project successfully, absolutely can create efficiency and allow you to move faster.

It’s just a misconception about the terms that we’re using and how we’re applying them to the ways that we’re trying to optimize the work that we’re doing.

Galen Low: Really like that. We’re like, there’s this semantic dodge where we’re like, we’ll just use another word, but then we still forget sometimes what the actual purpose is and how that can help us not treat every project as this unique snowflake, but actually it has some standardization that is still adaptable and flexible and agile.

And also, by the way. A lot of these agency projects and you probably aren’t allowed to talk about some of the stuff that you’re working on right now, but there are some mega projects happening within these agencies and like you can’t just fly by the seat of your pants anymore. Um, and I think that’s something that a lot of agencies are starting to come to terms with as well.

Lauren Selley: I couldn’t agree more. I would absolutely say that. And as someone who’s working on a mega project right now, there’s a lot of customization that comes into play when it comes to client services. [00:13:00] And that is 1 of the big pieces where a process can be scary because everyone’s saying, no, we can’t say that it only works this way.

When the client needs it to work that way. And we want to be a good client partner, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still learnings that we can take away from other similar projects and delivery in the past and make it a more successful outcome for everyone.

Galen Low: Love that. Love that. Let’s jam on some of those, like, sort of future notions of the PMO.

And, like, Bruno, you had mentioned that, um, you’ve seen some interesting changes, uh, and, and Desiree in the chat, I’m not sure if the chat got to everybody, but, uh, you know, this notion of having a PMO under the innovation, uh, sort of, uh, team, um, and division. Um, yeah, maybe let’s just start with you, Bruno, and just, like, what you’ve seen recently that you like about the evolution of the PMO and, like, what impact that has had on projects and organizations.

Bruno Morgante: I, over the past few years, so not just recently, but it is something that we have seen in the past few years, this transition that I mentioned from, uh, [00:14:00] governance and control PMO into enabling PMO. As I said, enabling is the key word here. It is about, it’s, it’s moving away from the concept of one size fits all, one, uh, we are the guardians, we control, we govern, into transforming into, we are here to enable you, your projects to be successful, to achieve what they want to achieve, to deliver value to the organization.

A few things that, that, that I have observed, it is definitely PMOs providing tools, resources, trainings, and development for, for the people in the organization, not only PMs, but all the people in the organization to explain why doing things in a certain way. would provide an added value. Definitely you have seen, you can see PMOs moving away from this idea of there is one single way of running [00:15:00] projects in this organization.

And they definitely started to embrace. different approaches, adaptive, predictive, hybrid, but then, of course, also having tailored approaches for specific type of projects. And this goes very much with the idea, with the concept of adaptability, the idea that we need to adapt the world around us is changing.

Projects are all different. We need to adapt. We cannot have only one. There is also another component that I have seen and, and I like it a lot. It’s the, the human side of things is this increased the focus on what I call the essential skills, communication, leadership, collaboration, adaptability, strategic thinking, just to name a few of them.

And this is Applying applying these in your day to day life as a PMO, it puts you in a different [00:16:00] relationship with the other pieces of the organization. It’s not anymore. Just Oh, there is that group of guardians over there. We are all in this together and we need to make it work. And and what you see with these PMOs, those that are evolving into this into this journey, that they also started to play a different role.

into how the projects are selected, how the projects are connected, related to the strategic objectives of the organization. So again, you see them moving away from, we have to deliver whatever comes down the pipeline into start looking at what makes sense to deliver. And this is of course, entering into the portfolio management, but it is something that you see more and more those PMOs to successfully.

Successful PMOs, uh, do now recently, Galen, if you want to just focus in the last few months, definitely the same PMOs that [00:17:00] started this evolution journey, you have seen them starting applying artificial intelligence into their day to day life. And these of course, open another big Uh, possibility, a lot of possibilities for improvements in processes, way of working and in supporting projects being successful.

But again, you and you already should be into this transformation journey instead of just being, well, that’s the only way. That’s us. And you need to follow us. It’s, it’s different. We are in this together.

Galen Low: I like that sort of collaborative tone and also just the human angle, right? Like, I think the, the, the bad rap that, you know, I, I kind of treated, I tricked all of you to fall into.

And agree with is that, you know, this is sort of like robotic PMO, um, by reputation, but actually, you know, Bruno, something you talk about a lot in your material is, um, you know, a human centered PMO.

Bruno Morgante: Yeah.

Galen Low: I have

Olivia Montgomery: to jump in. I love that so [00:18:00] much. And I think that that’s where the strength of a flex, the strength and flexibility and adaptability of a PMO, especially in the leadership roles of them is so important because you want to look at more.

The tools and structures and standardizations that the PMO provides are there to help you make less emotional decisions, to help catch, uh, decision making biases, logic fallacies that you have. So if you’re helping them understand, like, we’re giving you these tools, To help you manage and lead people that can be helpful as well.

And trying to think of a PMO is like, okay, you, you help us make thoughtful, methodical, accurate, good decisions by, like I said, using tools that kind of limit and account for emotional biases, personal motivations, department motivations, um, Providing that, like, the leadership of the people. It’s not that, like, you need to follow this project plan and do these tasks.

Helping them [00:19:00] understand that using tools like RACI charts and other things help the people make better decisions and work better together.

Galen Low: I love that. Tools are not the skills.

Olivia Montgomery: Lauren,

Galen Low: I wanted to swing back to something you had said about the sort of adaptability and tailoring and like arguably like there is so much humanity in the like client services world because you are thinking about how can I fit into this?

This client who does not work in our organization does not have the same strategic objectives as our organization. We need to help serve that. Could you talk me through maybe at a high level of what you’ve seen in terms of how that adaptable process. Uh, works like it’s like, okay, we have a way of doing things, but it’s not a cookie cutter or maybe it’s not a cookie cutter.

That’s that rigid. We can sort of bend it. But what does that process look like?

Lauren Selley: Absolutely. I think there are a couple of ways that you see people interested in your process and they may or may not want to just make sure that you have a framework in place to be able to deliver successfully. But also I am [00:20:00] a.

Giant advocate of saying that project managers are not just box checkers. And quite frankly, if you are just checking a box, you’re probably not delivering or executing on the role in its entirety and to be able to execute successfully. You know, you can’t just hand someone a tool tool belt of templates and of checklists and say, great, you’re going to be 100 percent successful at delivering the project.

And that’s why I also love this human element to it. The soft skills and the ability to collaborate, understand client goals and their objectives are the only things that really enable you to be successful when you are looking at. How to make tradeoffs right when you’re looking at when decisions and, uh, things get tough and you’re having to have those hard conversations, those crucial conversations, if you will, uh, negotiation skills, all of that comes into play when you want to make both teams successful.

Everyone knows that not every project is going to follow any type [00:21:00] of strict, like exact cookie cutter template. Everything is chaos every day. And we’re always trying to look at the ways that we can make the best decisions, not only for our team to protect our teams, but to still drive those outcomes of what the clients come to you to deliver in the first place, those big goals.

So I do think that there is the ability to tailor everything, but it comes with having Soft skills and the ability to build that relationship, understand the bigger purpose behind the scope, ask the hard questions about the why behind things versus just taking requirements blindly and saying, oh, that’s what we’re building because that’s what you want.

Right? You have to understand if it makes sense. I come from a business analyst background, and that’s kind of how I started my project management career. So when you really get into the nitty gritty of the why clients are trying to do the work that they’re trying to do, it can help you not only execute the current project, but lay the groundwork for a future relationship of growth [00:22:00] and other projects that you can work on together and other ways that you can bring value to their business.

So it’s really something that isn’t, um, optional. You have to cater things to your client’s needs.

Galen Low: I love that. It’s not, uh, just a tell, but also a listen, right, in order to be an enablement office in order to be, uh, you know, a group that empowers people to do that. I’m actually curious because that brings me back around to sort of the education piece and Bruno, you touched on it a little bit.

I think we’ve all kind of touched on a little bit about the idea that, yes, it’s not just, you know, holding all the templates and, you know, doling them out when asked, but also, like, educating others within the organization to sort of understand. Why projects are valuable, how projects work, um, you know, why things are the way they are.

Um, have any of you kind of seen some good examples of what that education looks like? Maybe using AI, maybe just like, you know, your standard training, but, um, you know, what have you seen PMOs, um, and other [00:23:00] equivalents do to sort of help educate and train maybe non project managers to understand projects better?

Olivia Montgomery: So a big part of my latest study on this, um, found that one of the most impactful ways. So I did a study that was a group of PMs that had formal PMOs at their office, their companies, informal PMOs and no PMO. And I asked them all the same questions and I wanted to compare and gauge, okay, like what kind of success, what kind of challenges, how do they compare against each other?

And the, even an informal PMO was found to have considerable impact. They had less, fewer delays in projects. They came in more on budget and more on time. And they did meet stakeholder expectations better, even informal. So that’s even if you’re just like a really good, you’re a small team, maybe, and you’re one good person that’s good at like the portfolio strategy management side, even [00:24:00] informal helps quite a lot.

The top way that that they’re driving that help is clarity of roles and responsibilities. And that’s across the board, not just project managers. That’s everybody in the company, ideally understands what everybody’s roles and responsibilities. It could just a simple clarity of what’s a product manager versus a scrum master versus a project manager.

If we’re not speaking the same language and we’re not using the same dictionary, things get really tough and you spend a lot of time. Spinning your wheels and not really understanding each other. So a PMO can help kind of build that dictionary to provide the clarity. And it’s that people need to know clearly and transparently who has decision making authority, who doesn’t, who’s responsible for executing a task, who’s responsible for validating, who sets the priority of what project goes first and what project gets canceled, that clarity, just very basic, same [00:25:00] dictionary.

using the same terms and understanding everybody’s roles and responsibility. Companies that have the PMOs, even informal, like I said, that do this, have double the success of projects in my latest study. It’s quite astounding.

Galen Low: I love that. I love that, like, clarity is the job, and in some ways, you know, that clarity around, like, how are we all working together, not just as a project team, but, like, as an organization, um, like, is part of the purpose, and is somewhat universal, I think, in terms of, like, humans working together, um, for now.

Humans and AI working together? I don’t know. I,

Olivia Montgomery: I’m already telling PMs who are starting to work with AI, uh, to put AI on a racy chart, especially. Like if they’re doing something specific, even if it’s something new or simple, like it’s going to start making your status reports, even just starting to show, like, this is your clear world.

I think there’s a lot of. Uh, [00:26:00] resistance, hesitancy, and fear about PMs being automated out of a job. Other people on the project being automated out of job. I think you can help kind of quell that and box. What AI is going to be doing, put in a race chart.

Galen Low: I love that. I think that’s such a great idea. I’m going to try that and see how many A’s end up with AI on it.

I guess maybe like, that kind of tilts us actually into the future. And I do want to kind of have a future spin to this. Uh, and then we’ll, we’ll get to the questions because I see a lot of questions sort of building up. Um, and I want to get to as many as we can. But let’s put on our future hats a little bit because we’re talking about ai.

Uh, Bruno, you mentioned AI in the context of, you know, A PMO. Um, and we’ve been talking about, you know, Lauren, you’ve mentioned about like sort of aligning to strategic objectives, um, for in a client context or in an enterprise context. You know, it has to be like the delivery. Of that, uh, of that strategy.

It’s not just getting projects done. It’s making sure projects are successful and that’s not the same thing. [00:27:00] Uh, Bruno, like talk to me, we’ve had some conversations about, you know, like, uh, you know, strategy execution as being sort of the PMO focus. And if you were to kind of look into the future of a human centered AI powered PMO, what, what shape does that take?

What are some of its characteristics for you?

Bruno Morgante: I think, uh, what I, what I see there, it is, uh, companies that take an important decision about defining what success looks like, because this is where we still have a big gap. You still hear too many people talking about, well, a project is successful if it is delivered on scope, on time, on budget, you know, the famous iron triangle.

It’s true until a certain point, like. I always, I always ask the question, so what’s the point of delivering, of perfectly delivering a project, which in the end, it, it produces [00:28:00] something which is absolutely not used by anyone. What’s the point? Mm-Hmm, . So do a step back, define success in a proper way, and, uh, and have the organization on the same page, not PMO saying.

A project needs to be delivered on scope, on time, on budget, while actually the organization wants. outcome, benefits, value out of that project. So bring them to that level. Then when you are there, it is definitely like you are playing a different game. As a PMO, you are definitely going to play a play a different game.

How do I see it in future? There are all the things that I described. Plus, of course, adding AI to the picture, it definitely it is going to help the projects being more successful, which in the end, it is the reason why we are, we are all doing what we do. We want them to be successful, [00:29:00] but it is also, it is also helping organizations getting what they actually wanted out of their strategy, design the strategy, which until now, really too many, too many companies are keeping the two things as so.

Separated and they shouldn’t we are we are we are talking about the same you have a beautiful strategy designed. How do we make it work like you might spend months I have examples of companies spending months so many hours. working on the strategy and then not talking about how do we make it happen.

This is connected. AI can help, but AI can help something that is already working. If it is broken, well, then you need to fix it before AI can help it, can help.

Galen Low: I love that. I love that sort of redefining, like, [00:30:00] what project success is, which I think is happening, like, but it’s, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s a big hole to get out of in terms of how deeply project management has been simplified down to a triangle, which is still important, but maybe not the only thing, right?

Like, you know, like, uh, you could realize ROI. Yeah. Like, yeah. long after the project is done, uh, and it could be a success. Um, I’ve had many of those projects that look like a failure on paper.

Olivia Montgomery: Uh, that also, that reminds me kind of building off of that. One way to be flexible and adaptable in your project approach is to offer different tracks, um, that you can work with your senior leadership team, your executives, and your clients.

Gather what everybody needs. What their thresholds are, what the key importance, what the success factors for the project is, and then you can let that identify, fall into what kind of tracks you have. So maybe you have a project plan track for money’s not the most important, but getting [00:31:00] it done on time is, and what they want specifically.

So, then you’ll have a track that focuses on those priorities. You see this a lot with hybrid project models, you’ll have an executive team that wants to know exactly what the project’s going to cost, when is it going to be done, they want that waterfall approach. I want to know when and how much and that’s it.

But sometimes within that, you can find the flexibility of, okay, but they’re flexible of what the deliverables end up looking like, what success looks like is a little more fluid. So you can have a track that supports that. And that’s one reason why just one project plan, one project track, especially if it’s just within like the iron triangle, isn’t helping anybody.

So you can find out what the success metrics and everybody’s thresholds are and adapt and flex your project plan for that.

Galen Low: I’m picturing like a sports playbook, right? It’s like, okay, we’re in this situation, needs this thing, right? Turn to page 21. Remember this? We practiced it. Let’s go. Yeah. [00:32:00] Oh, actually we can’t do that this time.

Let’s button hook this way. I’m using a sports term that I don’t fully understand. Oh, Lauren, I’m also

Olivia Montgomery: over my head. Sorry. Don’t

Galen Low: even have to

Lauren Selley: get into your own adventure book. I like

Galen Low: that. Missed those. Dating ourselves. Uh, Lauren, I wanted to go into the, the sort of agency side of things there because, you know, um, you mentioned before about sort of like this, this tailoring aspect, right?

And like, everything’s kind of some kind of hybrid, um, Frankenstein sponsor, um, but in a good way. Uh, and I’m wondering, Hey, like. Do others around you, your clients and other folks at the agency, do they see your team as innovators? And also as you’re kind of tailoring, like, how do you like bake those into your choose your own adventure book later?

Lauren Selley: Yeah, I think there’s so much opportunity. I’m going to be the person on here who’s going to say a lot of people are afraid of AI, I’m like, bring it on, give me [00:33:00] all of the tech, give me all of the technology, um, because I’m not afraid of it. I love being able to incorporate it in the day to day, to be able to take away the admin, to be able to take away the mundane and focus on more of the strategic pieces of things than the tactical decisions that we’re making.

Every now, listen, I am just like everyone else. I’m kind of sick of the buzzword, right? I don’t need to log onto LinkedIn or everything else in AI has to be every single post, but at the same time, it’s not going away. Clients want AI driven solutions. We want to utilize an out outside of AI, right? Just innovative technology to help us be more efficient.

Automating things is. So key, you see this in so many different, uh, top software, uh, options for project managers. They, they flaunt constantly their automation capabilities, their integration capabilities, workflows to handle things like budgeting and reporting and, uh, the getting much better at [00:34:00] resource management.

Um, I also love utilizing technology like that to help with kind of leaning back on what we were saying earlier, training and education. There’s this ability to, instead of using this approach from, you know, back when we were young and in school and just assuming everyone has the same learning style.

This is something I take to content creation as well. You don’t have to just say, here’s a training or here’s a video, watch it. We expect you to retain it. And we expect you to be able to deliver all of these results for a client. You can use these types of technologies to cater something to a topic that a person really likes hearing about, create unique analogies.

I created an entire series about how project management concepts relate to Taylor Swift’s era tour, but I wouldn’t be able to think of all of those myself because I haven’t even listened to half of the albums, right? These are things that we have the advantage of being able to use to help people learn these skills faster.

And help our clients kind of, uh, get more out of their engagement time with us [00:35:00] because we don’t have to get so bogged down in all the mundane reporting. Right. So I say, bring it on, take the admin stuff out of my life. I don’t like scheduling meetings anyway. I don’t like taking meeting minutes anyway.

Let me focus on the more strategic decisions and I’m happy.

Galen Low: I love that. And there’s like that opportunity and like opportunity risk as well of like, Oh, you know, it’s getting taken off my plate so I can do more admin instead of actually going, okay, the hard pivot is actually to be like, how can we get to the table on strategy because we might not be there right now.

Nobody sees us as innovators. Everyone thinks that we are, you know, like the robotic standardization police. Um, but we’re not, we’re actually innovating every day because every product’s a little bit different and we hit chaos and we actually need to do something a little bit differently. And I was going somewhere with that, but I’ve completely lost my train of thought, but I do love this like notion of, okay, like, don’t use your extra time, like leverage AI to do something more strategic and, you know, valuable to an organization [00:36:00] to help it achieve its goals and get in there, understand it, understand those goals and sort of wave that flag of, you know, that is what you’re doing.

I guess it’s funny because it kind of leads me down a path, and then I’ll like, you know, I’ll take it to the Q& A, um, probably after this, but, you know, the interesting path is like, you know, uh, we had talked about AI, the system fears in any profession, and will it take my job? Equally, we have like the informal PM, like I opened this up and I said, a lot of projects are getting run by people who aren’t project managers, who never thought of themselves as project managers, who’ve never been trained as project managers.

And then we have a PMO of innovation and collaboration, a human centered, empathetic. flexible, adaptable, dynamic, agile PMO that’s going to help people deliver projects. And I’m like, wait a minute, isn’t that two strikes against the PM profession, where suddenly we’re going to empower non PMs? We’re fine.

We love you non PMs, by the way. Uh, are we going to empower them to deliver projects? And what happens to the actual, like, project managers? And then, is AI going to then come in and also sort of fill in the gaps? And like, does that mean the end of the project [00:37:00] manager? And the PMO kind of lives on, but the PM doesn’t?

I don’t know. It’s an outrageous thought, but I thought maybe I would, uh, get an opinion. Fruto, what do you think? PMs, not in danger or in danger?

Bruno Morgante: Not in danger. Not in danger. Not in danger at all. Not in danger at all. Uh, there will, uh, there will definitely be more and more need of project managers in the next year.

So we definitely need the PMs, uh, to, to start, uh, if they haven’t done it yet, to start, uh, looking at things, uh, with different angle. And I think the, the focus on communication being very effective and have a proper communication plus being adaptable, moving away from, this is what I read when I was taking my certification 15 years ago.

Well, it is different. You need the word around us. has changed and it’s going to drastically change over the next few years. [00:38:00] PMs will, will, to be successful, they have to master those elements, but there will always be need for PMs. Absolutely. More and more companies will move into, into the approach of a project versus operations.

We will need PMs. We definitely need PMs. AI is going to help project managers to be more successful. And actually, as Lauren said, It will help taking away a lot of the boring admin stuff, which nobody likes. And it’s going to do it for you, do it better, and potentially also to help you gaining some insights from these boring stuff.

I always, I, again, I always take the easy example of lessons learned, we do them since ever, and no one is reading them. Well, what if AI is going to do it for you, [00:39:00] summarize it, and when you start your new project, you already have the summary of all of that, then of course, if you don’t follow that, that’s your choice, but that is definitely going to be a big, big added value, uh, for, for a project manager.

I

Galen Low: love that a mission briefing, not like a stack of lessons before you get going.

Olivia Montgomery: I see Matthew in the chat pointed out a good thing to a good aspect of the PM is also going to make clients happy. Like nobody’s going to Want to just work with software. Nobody’s going to want to be like, Hey, where’s this effort at?

Let me check a dashboard. It doesn’t have like nerds like us do that, but that’s just not what a client’s going to do, and that’s not what executives are going to do. There’s always going to be people that want to talk to a human. We’re seeing that like in the U S. Right now they just want to be like, if you’re called customer service, they want like one button and you can start talking to a human that’s very new, but that’s showing that that’s [00:40:00] how people want to operate.

So yeah, you’re not going to be able to just be like, all right, let me get the automated service of this project management. No, you’re going to always want to hit a button and talk to a person and that person needs to know the project. And I don’t know how that could be anybody other than a project manager by whatever job title you want to give them.

Galen Low: I love that for the like, communication, clarity, interfacing, the listening portion, the humanity. I do like it.

Lauren Selley: I couldn’t agree more. I mean, I echo everything that everyone says, but there’s so much that comes down to the historic know, and I know that you can train AI with data sets and things from historic projects and the lessons learned, but truly the, what you’re taking away from it and what you’re, um, Learning and adapting the number one thing that I feel like PMs have a hard time understanding their career growth path is when you are able to think of think of it this way, a junior PM or a project coordinator, they have this list [00:41:00] of roles and responsibilities and they go down it and they go, boss, I check all of these boxes.

I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I can do this. I should be a senior project manager. I should be a program manager. And the boss goes, I get that. But you just don’t have enough experience. Right. What does that mean? What does that mean? Right. They’re like, I don’t have enough experience. Look, I can do it all.

I can do every single one of these things. What you can’t do is anticipate risk yet based on previous projects, previous learnings, and what you know goes wrong every time, or what you know and anticipate the client’s going to say. There’s so much nuance that comes to the knowledge that you’ve retained from running these things in the past from the way that you know, teams operate and interface with each other, especially when you run global teams like I do the things between, um, India or Europe and, uh, the Philippines and, uh, South America and Latin America.

We have all, all of the. Various cultures and the nuance that comes into that too. And all of that can’t be automated. It’s an [00:42:00] amazing tool to have technology, AI, everything helping you with all of the mundane, but PM’s here to stay. We’re people, people, right? And that role is going to exist.

Galen Low: I love that.

Nuance and people people. Boom! Um, alright, I know we’re at like, uh, 15 minutes to the hour. Uh, so I am, uh, going to do a little bit of a pause. Um, I know some folks may need to start peeling away to the next meeting. If that’s you, I wanted to say thank you for joining us and for being a part of this. Of this important conversation.

Uh, we are gonna keep going right until the hour though, because there’s too many juicy questions that I’m looking at here to not move there, um, right away. Uh, but I did wanna say that if you are enjoying yourself here, please be sure to RSVP for our next event. Uh, Michael’s gonna put it in the chat. Um, we’ve also got a calendar that you can subscribe to with, uh, some events.

Uh, some of them are member only events. Some of them are open, uh, to our VIP guests. Uh, but we will, um, we will get there, [00:43:00] uh, as we go. And also if you are a guest here today, um, and you’re interested in what we do, um, come check us out at the digitalprojectmanager. com slash membership. Um, lots of perks, lots of fun, uh, lots of things like this.

Um, and yeah, I think it’s a, it’s a great assist for, um, carving out the future of project management everywhere. That’s my plug. My last question actually was like, Hey, so, so what do we think? Like, you know, should the future be the PMO show or should it go, go the way of the dodo? And I think resounding PMO is here to stay.

It can be an innovation hub. We need to keep it human. We need to use AI to our advantage and we need to drive strategy more than we need to focus only on an iron triangle. Um, and I think there’s some like how questions now, this is why I wanted to get into them, because like, okay. But how? Um, so I’ve got a question over here, uh, from Matthew.

Um, question is how can small agencies instill a PMO when funding is typically lacking, leadership buy in [00:44:00] is challenging, and the experience of people promoted into the position, they just don’t have the training, and also the agency isn’t able to train them up. Where, where does one start? I might throw that to Lauren first.

Lauren Selley: I have an answer, but I can’t tell you that you’re going to like it. And the answer is going to be do it anymore. Um, you do it anyway. And it’s not uncommon to see this be an answer to how you prove the value of something. Um, start it, start showing results. It’s the same way that you get promoted in a job, do the next role above you show that you can handle that capability, start optimizing process, show how you’ve made an impact in the way that things are working and show how you believe that you could make more impact, create that business case, put the why behind it.

Um, the value of the PMO again is coming back to being able to support these bigger organizational goals, and if we can get people away from the stigma of [00:45:00] the name and think about it more as a group that is truly trying to help the organization meet their goals, then executives and leadership start to see it as Profitability, efficiency, ways to actually make money versus spend money on operations.

But it’s hard to get them there and you have to prove it first. So do it anyway.

Galen Low: I love that. Prove it out. Prove it out. And while you’re doing that, also, Olivia, you had mentioned your report, which I am not in a position to grab the link from, but I will share it out. Or if somebody has it and wants to put it in chat, where there are some data points to kind of start that conversation, I think that’s, uh, that could be a really useful way to do both at the same time.

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll drop

Olivia Montgomery: it in. If you guys have some stakeholders, some management are really into numbers. I’ve got some numbers for you guys. And it does specifically touch on informal, which I see Alex has a question, though any PM can take on that PMO role, like, like Lauren said, just do [00:46:00] it. If nobody else is doing it and you have an idea and you’re like, Oh, I see, I see where we can think about this different.

I think where we, we can kind of mature our process here. Just do it.

Lauren Selley: I’ll add one tiny extra piece. Just do it, but collaborate because to the point that Olivia. Made earlier, everyone has a different level of exposure that they experience in an organization. Some people are zoomed way out and they’re focused on these big picture goals and they have no idea what’s going down on the, on the tactical ground.

That’s when you see people who are doing the day to day execution so angry at management because it’s like, how far removed can you be? Then you have the people that are so tactical that they’re constantly like, this stinks. This doesn’t work. We need to fix this. And they don’t have any idea what the bigger problems are that the organization’s trying to face.

You only solve these problems when you work together and bring together these different mindsets and different levels. So do it, but collaborate. don’t work in a silo. [00:47:00]

Galen Low: Love it. Yeah. It’s the isolation that’s created those negative stereotype in the first place. . Oh, I, there’s another question here, and I think we touched on it here, but I wanted to kind of expand on the question is, um, is there a certain size of agency or I’m going to open it up and say, or any organization that like should or should not consider having a PMO?

I’m wondering, Bruno, if you, if you have any thoughts on that.

Bruno Morgante: Well, I don’t have a number of projects, uh, or a size of projects in mind, but definitely there is, uh, there might be like, if, if you’re, if your company is doing two, three projects, 10 projects, you, you probably don’t need that. You don’t need that type of structure unless.

those are big, important projects, then it might be the case. In general, I am pro structure, pro PMOs, as you can imagine. But, uh, but I [00:48:00] am the first one, uh, saying it really depends from, from your reality. And, uh, and, and sometimes I, it happens to me when I speak with the small startups and I ask them, what is a project for you?

And I start the conversation from that discussion. And sometimes it’s not really a project. They have something else going on and they think they refer to it as a project, but it is not. So it’s, uh, and, but then again, think about if the organization decides for whatever reason to implement a project management office.

It doesn’t have to be a 25 people PMO, it could be a one person PMO, a two, three people PMO, it depends. It really depends from, from the approach and what we want to, to achieve.

Galen Low: Love that.

Olivia Montgomery: Yeah, I would say one thing you can look for is if there’s competing priorities, which there almost always are [00:49:00] competing priorities.

So yeah, once you’ve hit a certain level of maybe it’s a dollar amount and you want to keep an eye on that, you know, investment, where it’s going. But in general, you would ideally want the PMO to be positioned in the most neutral position possible within the company so that they’re not, you know, they don’t have to adhere to, they don’t only report to the CTO or CIO, or they only report to operations.

You would like them placed in the most neutral place possible. Uh, possible. And so anytime you have opposing ideas, operations wants this, HR wants this, IT needs this, that’s definitely where you need a PMO to help manage and be that neutral space. Because if you don’t create a neutral space, everybody’s gonna Take their sides and take their departments and their own inter, their own motivations and just clash.

So you need that neutral ground and a PMO creates that.

Galen Low: Oh, that sort of mediator of conflicting interests. Yeah. Oh, [00:50:00] I, I really like this next question. Uh, From one of our members here. Um, it’s very much a how question. Uh, and I think it’s a good one because we haven’t really talked about it. Uh, the question is, what recommendations do you have to help shift your team, your team’s mindset, your PM team’s mindset from processes and best practices, um, being presented as robotic and mandated to, towards like a framework of, you know, supporting the why, like we talked about, like, what does, what is a way that you can get your PMs to kind of like embody this mindset and reflect it into your organization, um, to kind of start the shift.

Lauren Selley: I can take that. I mean, it’s. I don’t mean to oversimplify it, but if you’ve heard of the five whys, it is there for a reason. You ask why that needs to exist. You ask why that is a challenge. And then you try to understand the underlying issues behind that and understand why those are happening. Right? Um, so many people are so quick to prescribe what they think needs to [00:51:00] change.

Without truly getting to the root cause of what the, the underlying issues are. Right. So really trying to distill the challenges, um, saying something is a problem. Like people are burnt out. We need to fix that. That’s a real hard problem to fix if you don’t understand why people are burned out, right?

Well, we ask them to work too many hours. Well, why? Well, our projects are overestimate or, you know, underestimated and, uh, we don’t have enough time. Well, why is that happening? Okay. Well, when we estimate, we normally get handed off something from the sales team that doesn’t have enough. Well, how is that happening?

Right? You have to really get to the root of the problem. To understand the downstream effects, and once you understand that, you really can eliminate so many things with one salt, right? There’s so many downstream challenges that can come from one problem, but often people only see that bigger issue at the end.

So, you just have to dig in and keep getting to the root cause of it.

Galen Low: Well, the [00:52:00] curiosity and listening thing. Yeah. And if I can, if I,

Bruno Morgante: if I can add a bit, the same approach works very well. Also, when in you’re running a PMO and you start seeing a project managers that are somehow not willing to follow your directions, that that’s the same, like ask, ask the, why ask, why is that?

Why you don’t want to produce your project status report at the end of the week? And you frequently are going to realize it’s not because the PM is lazy, but it’s just because if they say that if they tell the truth, maybe a manager is going to finger pointing at them and say, well, you PM are not doing the job or what, because whatever they write, nobody’s reading the report.

So then the problem is not the PM is not doing the status report. The problem is much bigger is the organization is not ready to have that type of conversation. And you can. Take that and bring it to to [00:53:00] the right table, having the discussion to the right table.

Galen Low: Love that. I think I have time for one more question.

I’m sorry. There’s so many good questions here. Um, Michael and I sometimes we’ll gather them together and we’ll still have a conversation around them in our community. So we will try and do that. But I’m going to conflate two questions here because, you know, we’ve been talking about project managers. I have a project manager biased.

Um, but, uh, the, the, the question I’m going to conflate is Do the panelists think that a PMO is more of an operations role or more of a senior PM slash director role? And also, to conflate a question with another one, can we talk about some of the non PM roles, the administrative support that supports a PMO, and what kind of skill set or mindset they should have?

Did I? I think it still makes sense. Anyways, any takers?

Lauren Selley: So the first question, or the first part of the question, I don’t think that, again, we touched on this a little bit before, but I don’t think that you would say, like, this is a director role, or a head of [00:54:00] PM role. It has to be a collaborative effort between everyone in all parts of the organization.

And in multiple departments, I don’t even know if we’ve talked about that necessarily, but this is cross functional. If only project managers are the ones trying to solution for these things, but they’re solutioning. For things that impact other departments. That’s a quick way to get a lot of people to hate you, right?

Like that’s the reason why we have this allergic reaction to process, because you hear a bunch of project managers getting a room together and then they go, Oh, the entire company, this is the way we deliver projects now. And you over here that had no input into this, that’s how you have to do it too.

They might have a completely different perspective. So I don’t think it’s a title thing, right? Collaborative to the core. Um, sometimes the title makes a difference and who has the authority to start it or to approve time or to approve budget that can go and be allocated towards it. But certainly not who should be participating only and who should [00:55:00] be making the decisions in a silo.

So that’s the first part.

Olivia Montgomery: I think you should try and identify The skill sets and the traits that you need, who, who is always asking, challenging the status quo, who’s digging deeper, who gets people to open up and talk transparently and honestly, who’s able to, you know, do that, that’s key, and that can be anybody, whether they need to be your victim You know, put into a different role based on like your organization’s culture.

That’s going to be case by case, but try to identify those traits. Those, you know, dynamic thinking, problem solving, always challenging and trying to like iterate and prioritize and let ruthless prioritization mindset. Find those people and amplify their voices and have them kind of drive and be kind of like the pivot point for the collaboration, because like I said, they’re the ones that people open up to lean into that, have them [00:56:00] keep doing it because you need to be collaborative.

Galen Low: Boom. I love that. Um, we are at time. I know some folks have already, uh, had to peel away. Um, and thank you for everyone who’s still sticking around. Um, listen, I just wanted to say, A, a big thank you to our panelists, because this was a great conversation and there’s so many places we could go with it. Um, and also thank you to our attendees.

I saw a very healthy and insightful chat happening on the side. Thank you for that. Thank you for just attending. Even if you were just here listening, sorry if I didn’t get to your questions. Um, we are gonna try and, um, just bring it into the conversation in our community. So if that’s interesting to you, um, check us out at the link that I think Michael has posted there.

Um, and overall, uh, I think we do have a feedback survey. We love feedback, Ron, honest feedback. We’ve got thick skin. Throw it at us. Um, that’s how we improve. That’s how we get better. That’s how we listen and be adaptive as well. Uh, so, uh, we’ll toss that into the chat. And, um, I think we’ll leave it there because I know you’ve got to go.

Uh, I want to be [00:57:00] respectful of calendars. Um, so thank you very much. Uh, panelists, uh, are going to hang around and we’re going to have a little debrief just so you know, but, um, I’ll, I’ll bid everyone a nice rest of your. Day is it Wednesday?

Olivia Montgomery: Thank you everyone. I really appreciate

the engagement.