What can PMO leaders do differently in 2024

Updated: January 15, 2024

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PMO leaders are charged with leading projects and programs to raise the revenue generation capabilities of their organization. Or to boost the operational productivity at their organization to save costs.

Therefore, PMO leaders directly impact the balance sheet of their organization. Their decisions are directly responsible for increasing the top-line growth potential or decreasing the bottom-line cost base.

With expected outcomes measurable in hard currency, it is only wise to carefully measure and tangibly accrue proof points of irrefutable progress from multiple perspectives throughout the entire journey of the programs leading up to the desired outcomes for the portfolio.

Until now, it was notoriously hard to prove how an individual program or project added tangible value to a portfolio's growth.

Technology has finally come of age.

Today's cutting-edge data integration, interpretation, and prediction capabilities can empower PMOs to do much more with their data than was ever possible before.

Here are three things PMOs can do today to democratize the use of their company's project data to energize decision making from top to bottom of their PMOs:

1. Measure everything worth measuring; make data your superpower
2. Embed future-proofing in the decision-making of your leadership team
3. Help program teams foresee the impact of their work on the overall portfolio
   

Why measure everything important

Today, it is not enough to measure the red, amber, green status of tasks, projects, programs, and portfolios. Portfolio leaders can now dive into how these statuses came to be, what caused problems, and when. Armed with a deeper understanding, they can not only solve problems but lay the groundwork to avoid them in the future. As such, modern PMs need to look beyond the traditional approach of measuring risks, milestones, timelines, budgets, and resources in isolation. It is now possible to study the integrated impact of these variables in conjunction with one another to characterize the nature of every opportunity or challenge holistically.

Why future-proof decision-making

Today, it is no longer enough to only look at past data, things that have already transpired, to make decisions about the future purely based on instinct and gut. It is now possible for portfolio leaders to empower their intuitive thinking with the power of data. Modern machine-learning algorithms can crunch data in orders of magnitude to interpret the future consequences of past data to bolster or challenge assumptions.

With program teams diligently working on resolving current issues and mitigating known risks at hand, it is incumbent upon portfolio leaders to use predictive data to foresee future risks and potential problems and prepare their teams to nip them in the bud.

Why foresee work impact on portfolio

Today, it is suboptimal for teams to work in a silo, unaware of the impact of their work on peer teams in related groups and on the overall portfolio. Using cutting-edge technologies, teams can continue to work on their team's priorities inside their project tools yet have insight into how their work relates to other groups in the portfolio. Vice versa, understand how work in progress in other groups affects their timelines, milestones, and risks. This resulting broadened awareness can help improve the quality of decision-making and raise satisfaction from the meaningfulness of work performed.

The world today is more connected than ever before. Our decisions were always making an impact, just that now we know where and how. Technology makes that possible.

Leaders of today's PMOs have the power to enrich the working environment of their portfolio, program, and project teams by putting their data to work. To not only meet but beat expectations.