Episode 419: Setting up a PMO in 100 Days (Free)

Play Now: Project Management Professional (PMP)® Exam: PMP Exam training : Hussain Bandukwala, PMO Coach Is your company thinking about setting up a PMO and nobody, not even you, have the experience to do it? That is not a problem. Our guest today is Hussain Bandukwala (LinkedIn Profile). He is the organizer of the PMO Virtual Summit and PMOs are his passion. He writes and speaks about them. And in one of his articles he says that even if you’ve never done it before you can still set up a PMO in 100 days. We discuss how realistic this is, what skills a PMO leader needs, the mindset needed to do this in 100 days, and then we’ll take you phase by phase through the process of setting up your very own PMO in 100 days. PDU Tip This interview is 44:29 minutes long. This means that you can "legally" only claim 0.50 PDUs for listening to it, because in order to claim 0.75 PDUs the interview must be 45 minutes long. However... if you first listen to the interview and then also read the following article from Hussain about setting up a PMO in 100 days, then you can go ahead and claim 0.75 PDUs! Click to read the article Episode Transcript Below are the first few pages of the transcript. The complete transcript is available to Premium subscribers only. Podcast Introduction Hussain Bandukwala: In this episode of The Project Management Podcast™, we will set up a PMO in 100 days. Cornelius Fichtner: Hello and welcome to The Project Management Podcast™ at www.pm-podcast.com. This is Episode #419 and I am Cornelius Fichtner. Thank you for joining us. Podcast Interview Cornelius Fichtner: Is your company thinking about setting up a PMO and nobody, not even you, has the experience to do it? That’s not a problem. Our guest today is Hussain Bandukwala. He is the organizer of the PMO Virtual Summit and PMOs are his passion. He writes and speaks about them. And in one of his articles, he says that even if you’ve never done it before, you can still set up a PMO in 100 days. We discuss how realistic this is, what skills a PMO leader needs, the mindset needed to do this in 100 days and then we’ll take you phase by phase through the process of setting up your very own PMO in 100 days. Podcast Interview Cornelius Fichtner: Hello, Hussain and welcome to The Podcast! Hussain Bandukwala: Thank you so much, Cornelius! It’s great to be here! Cornelius Fichtner: In your bio on LinkedIn, you write the following: “I help aspiring and first-time project management office leaders succeed.” What is it that you personally like about PMOs? Hussain Bandukwala: You know, PMOs come in different shapes, sizes and personalities. There is no one size fits all and every time you go about setting up a PMO or rather every time you should go about setting up a PMO, you should really start from scratch. Try to really understand why the PMO is needed and then take it from there. Don’t try to set up a PMO that you may have seen someone set up somewhere else or done it yourself. Don’t try to just try to plug and play into your organization because there are very good chance that it’s not going to work. So having a lot of consulting background where doing the cycle was sort of second nature for me. Every time I went to a new client with a fresh big name, getting to learn new people, getting to understand what the current pain points were. Our current PMOs do just like that. Just that in itself is so fantastic. And then I think the way PMOs can have an impact from an organization, I think that’s just wonderful because if PMOs are done right, their goal much like other departments in an organization is to make sure that organization benefit its strategies successfully. Using project management as a tool forward to get there. So once all of those things get into action and then seeing the beauty about how PMOs and PMO leaders have that vantage point to see and touch everything within the organization and be able to successfully move the needle for it, I think it can be a very, very