• As a new PMO director, you’ve been thrown into the middle of an unfamiliar organizational structure and a chaotic project environment.
• The expectations are that the PMO will help improve project outcomes, but beyond that your mandate as PMO director is opaque.
• You know that the statistics around PMO longevity aren’t good, with 50% of new PMOs closing within the first three years. As early in your tenure as possible, you need to make sure that your stakeholders understand the value that your role could provide to the organization with the right level of buy-in and support.
• Whether you’re implementing a new PMO or taking over an already existing one, you need to quickly overcome these challenges by rapidly assessing your unfamiliar tactical environment, while at the same time demonstrating confidence and effective leadership to project staff, business stakeholders, and the executive layer.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

• The first 100 days are critical. You have a window of influence where people are open to sharing insights and opinions because you were wise enough to seek them out. If you don’t reach out soon, people notice and assume you’re not wise enough to seek them out, or that you don’t think they are important enough to involve.
• PMOs most commonly stumble when they shortsightedly provide project management solutions to what are, in fact, more complex, systemic challenges requiring a mix of project management, portfolio management, and organizational change management capabilities. If you fail to accurately diagnose pain points and needs in your first days, you could waste your tenure as PMO leader providing well-intentioned solutions to the wrong project problems.
• You have diminishing value on your time before skepticism and doubt start to erode your influence. Use your first 100 days to define an appropriate mandate for your PMO, get the right people behind you, and establish buy-in for long-term PMO success.

Impact and Result

• Develop an action plan to help leverage your first 100 days on the job. Hit the ground running in your new role with an action plan to achieve realistic goals and milestones in your first 100 days. A results-driven first three months will help establish roots throughout the organization that will continue to feed and grow the PMO beyond your first year.
• Get to know what you don’t know quickly. Use Info-Tech’s advice and tools to perform a triage of every aspect of PMO accountability as well as harvest stakeholder input to ensure that your PMO meets or exceeds expectations and establishes the right solutions to the organization’s project challenges.
• Solidify the PMO’s long-term mission. Adopt our stakeholder engagement best practices to ensure that you knock on the right doors early in your tenure. Not only do you need to clarify expectations, but you will ultimately need buy-in from key stakeholders as you move to align the mandate, authority, and resourcing needed for long-term PMO success.