PMO Strategies

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills You can have a strong strategy, a solid plan, and all the right tracking in place and still watch delivery slow down because the people doing the work are not truly engaged. That is where this conversation with Ian Watts gets interesting for PMO and transformation leaders. We ta...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills You can be surrounded by people all day and still feel like you are leading alone. Your team needs confidence from you. Your executives expect a recommendation. Your peers may be part of the tension you are trying to work through. So you keep turning the problem over in your own...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen AI activity is spreading across organizations faster than many leaders can see what it is costing, where it fits, or whether it is creating business value. That is exactly why I believe this moment matters for PMO and transformation leaders. In this episode, I’m joined by Ced...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills How many times have you told yourself, “I’m not ready yet” ? Not ready to have the executive conversation. Not ready to apply for the role. Not ready to build the PMO differently. Not ready to get the training or support because you need to figure a few more things out first. I...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen AI is creating more ideas, more experiments, and more pressure to move than most PMO processes were designed to absorb. That does not mean your PMO needs a bigger gate. It means the way you connect strategy, intake, prioritization, capacity, and learning has to change. In thi...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen A few years ago, I was listening to PMO leaders compare the size of the portfolios they managed. $50 million. $100 million. $500 million. Billions. Those numbers sound impressive, but they only tell me what the organization invested. The business question is what it got back....

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen If you are responsible for helping strategy become reality, you probably know this tension: the executive team wants the portfolio moving faster, but you cannot move work you cannot see. Hidden departmental initiatives compete for the same people. Decisions wait for the next...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills You did the assessment. You designed the service around what people said they needed. You launched it, trained everyone, published the templates, and built the SharePoint page. Then someone submits the old intake form. An executive bypasses the new prioritization process. The go...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills Some of the most expensive words I hear inside an organization are, “We’re waiting for more clarity.” Sometimes that is exactly the right call. The organization may be missing information it truly needs to act responsibly. But sometimes “we need more information” is a hiding pla...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Organizations are moving quickly to deploy AI. But are they building the adaptability, judgment, and decision systems required to use it well, or repeating the same mistakes that weakened so many Agile transformations? AI can analyze more data, generate more options, and move...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills This episode is personal for me in a way most podcast conversations are not. For the first time, my son and co-author, Grayson Barnard, joins me on the PMO Strategies podcast. One of my closest friends, Dawn Mahan, is here too. The three of us talk about Projectland, baseball, t...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen A lot of PMOs are being asked to lead AI and agile transformation while still operating as reporting, governance, and oversight functions. That is where things start to break. Instead of simplifying work, AI can add more coordination, more noise, more duplicated effort, and m...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Ways of Working Project management has more technology, training, certifications, and information than at any other point in the profession’s history. But a better tool cannot rescue a plan the team never built together. AI cannot manage a risk nobody is actively addressing. A credential can...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills One of the fastest ways to weaken your influence as a PMO, project, or transformation leader is also one of the most common. It sounds responsible. It sounds like alignment. It sounds like you are reinforcing executive support. But every time you lead with “the sponsor said,” “t...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen There is a lot of pressure to prove your organization is keeping up with AI. But the most important question is not whether AI is already inside your tools. It is whether your organization understands the work well enough to know what AI is about to amplify. AI is exposing th...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills What if the biggest thing limiting your influence is not your methodology, your governance model, your tools, or even your executive support? What if it is the mindset you have been operating from without realizing it? In PMO, project, and transformation work, scarcity is everyw...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Most PMOs are working hard. That is not the problem. The problem is that the work they are doing is not always connected clearly enough to the outcomes executives care about. And when your PMO cannot connect its work to revenue, cost savings, risk reduction, strategic growth,...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Having more than one PMO is not the problem. Disconnected PMOs are. In larger organizations, it is completely normal to have an IT PMO, a business PMO, a transformation office, a product delivery function, and maybe even a strategy execution group all trying to help the organ...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Ways of Working Organizations have more data than ever before. More dashboards. More reports. More tools. More conversations about AI. And yet, many leaders still cannot get the trusted information they need to make fast, confident decisions. In this episode, I am joined by Scott Ambler to d...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills One of the hardest parts of leading a PMO has nothing to do with project management. It is credibility. You can have the right framework, the right tools, the right templates, and the right intentions. But if the organization does not trust the PMO yet, every process you introdu...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills PMOs rarely fail because of a weak plan. They fail because the adoption stalls. Pilots linger. Big bets like AI never move into everyday behavior. The initiative launches with energy. People say yes. Then six weeks in, nothing really changed. In this episode, I sit down with Tra...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Most PMOs do not fail because of the people leading them. They fail because they were designed around the project management process instead of business outcomes. Organizations launch PMOs hoping they will improve visibility, create accountability, and help leaders execute st...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Ponder this - “Are you running a project or running a business?” Most project managers never ask that question. They track tasks, manage timelines, and report status. Meanwhile, executives are quietly asking a different question: does this person understand how the business w...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Business Acumen Many organizations still debate whether a PMO truly adds value. Some leaders see it as essential. Others believe it slows everything down. The reality is that most PMOs are judged based on outcomes they were never designed to deliver. In this episode, I talk about why so many...

Welcome to the PMO Strategies Podcast + Blog, where PMO leaders become IMPACT Drivers! PMI Talent Triangle: Power Skills Stakeholder engagement is called a soft skill. It is one of the biggest drivers of delivery success. I had an incredible conversation with Dr. Kimberly Strickland. She is the Director of the PMO at SAS Institute. Kimberly leads complex government and education project work. She...