Building high performing project, programme and portfolio support offices

By Melanie Franklin, CEO at Maven Training

The PPSO Sig is an opportunity for those performing support roles to meet with their colleagues from other organisations and industries, to debate key issues. I attended the dinner at the end of day one, and gave a presentation on building high performing project, programme and portfolio support offices the next day. One of the things that really struck me about the attendees at this event was their strong desire to really get something out of their 2 days, and to make sure that the event was not just a talking shop.

As it was such a tough audience, I was really grateful that my slot was so well received, with lots of comments on email afterwards saying very similar things "Fantastic presentation at the PPSO group, really like your style!"

For my presentation, i took a client centric view of a support office, as I am currently relying on the PMO at a client to help me deliver a business critical programme against very tight deadlines. I used my current experience to set out what I need from a PMO, and then showed how I thought a highly effective team could help me achieve these requirements. I based the development of a highly effective team on Tuckmans model of team formation, and the group and I explored how the development of a team charter for the PMO can help the team form and storm as quickly as possible, so that the team reaches its 'norming' phase as early as possible. I divided the attendees into small teams, and each of the teams had to build their own charter, and then display them around the room so that the learning could be shared by each of the other teams. After that, we looked at how teams moving from Norming to Performing by sharing capability and each of the teams was invited to create their own ideas of how best to develop capability in their own environments. There were a lot of very creative and innovative ideas, and this session was run as a competition, with the best idea (judged by a PPSO Committee member) winning a very high quality box of chocolates - which I am relieved they decided to share, so I could have a couple!! The winning idea from the capability activity was 'pass it on, pass it back' which describes how experiences of service delivery by one member of the PMO can be shared with others - passing it on, with a feedback loop from other team members - passing it back. So one team member explains their experience to 3 others, they each explain it to 3 others until everyone that would find the experience useful has been informed and had a chance to comment on it.BY