Sessions

Strategic Luck
Only a fool leaves their future to chance. Get ready to level up the luck in your organization and your life with the international bestselling author Jonathan Brill, whom HBR recently called, “The World’s Foremost Transformation Architect” and Forbes ranked as its #1 futurist.

In this fun and compelling talk, Brill will unveil three competencies to maximize the likelihood of things working out and help you navigate the unpredictable waters we face today. You’ll learn to be even more adaptable, strategic, and collaborative – skills that can help you turn uncertainty into a strategic advantage. So, let’s get lucky! Join Brill and discover how to strategically create your own luck and thrive in our time of radical change.

Do your annual plans and goals fall short of success, each and every year, in some way? Does it take heroic efforts to wrangle the masses, to achieve all your dreams and milestones? Join our special guest speaker, Kevin D. Martin, to learn simple yet amazingly impactful solutions, to the complex and ever-changing chaos of the work we all do annually, to achieve success. Bring those difficult situations that frustrate and confound you, year after year.

In this engaging session, Dr. Mona Zoughaib, a renowned Project Management expert and speaker, will share valuable insights and practical strategies for unlocking PMO excellence and driving successful project delivery. Drawing from her extensive experience in the GCC and MENA region, Dr. Zoughaib will delve into the key factors that contribute to PMO success, including effective governance, strategic alignment, and fostering a culture of collaboration.

In 'Tales from the Field: Illuminating PMO Practitioner Experiences', Dr. Mona Zoughaib draws from her significant tenure leading PMOs at esteemed organizations such as Fransabank and Middle East Airlines. She will share her unique journey, illuminating the successes, challenges, innovative solutions, and valuable lessons learned along the way. These insights will bring to life the realities of running a PMO, shedding light on the strategic decisions, adaptive leadership, and resilience required in such roles. This session promises to be an invaluable resource for both budding and seasoned PMO professionals, offering a rare glimpse into the first-hand experiences of a seasoned PMO leader.

This presentation will explore key considerations for managing mega-projects, including how to effectively align project goals with organizational strategy, what project management practices to implement, and the importance of managing change throughout the project lifecycle. We will discuss the importance of technical aspects of Project Management, like establishing a robust governance structure and defining clear project objectives to ensure that mega-projects are delivered on time, within budget, and to the required level of quality, but we will also examine the challenges of managing Change in mega-projects and explore strategies for effectively communicating with stakeholders, managing resistance, and ensuring that project outcomes remain aligned with organizational goals in an ever changing business environment.

In 2021, the American Planning Association decided to train a cohort of project managers to carry out the Board of Directors’ top priorities, with a framework of a lot of legacy processes and operational baggage. Over the next two years, the organization managed to re-set the Board’s expectations about what could be accomplished, and focus on transforming how the staff team collaborated with each other.

Mike is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don’t miss this stellar session where you’ll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Mike!

In this webinar, you’ll: 

Learn how to deliver strategic value in your organization 

Discover the key to leadership competencies and behaviors for strategic leadership as a PM 

Gain insights into strategic approaches in the digital world 

Unpack the secrets to leading successfully as a strategic leader 

Discover new findings on how AI can help you deliver value in your organizations.

We often hear Project Management Office (PMO) leaders lamenting, "Despite my best efforts, I can't seem to improve project management." Equally, senior executives voice their concerns saying, "Even after implementing a PMO, our delivery capabilities haven't improved." It's indeed frustrating. The advent of Agile promised a panacea, but senior leaders are now knocking at our door saying, "After investing millions and restructuring into smaller teams and value streams, the situation has worsened - only costs have increased!"

The crux of the issue is that most PMOs don't make a significant impact. They focus on promoting processes, methods, and generating reports, attempting to enforce governance - but there's a lack of genuine value creation. This core value creation remains the prerogative of those who handle Profit & Loss responsibilities. Agile is doing the same – just with more costs.

It's simple - if you're not adding value, you won't be valued. Without being valued, your capacity to effect meaningful change diminishes drastically.

The mandate for PMOs is clear - they need to offer a unique value, something unparalleled within the organization. But the million-dollar question remains - what could that unique value be?

Discover the transformative potential of strategic project management in this engaging session. In this interview, Willetta will share her role, challenges, and "ah-ha" moments that she's learned helping her organization deliver on strategy. In this session, you'll learn the keys to their success and gain valuable insights for your own journey.

Willetta is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don't miss this stellar session where you'll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Willetta!

By methodically putting equal emphasis on the hard and soft elements of leading change, organizations can more than double their odds of success (Colin Price & Scott Keller – Beyond Performance 2019)

Transformation through Design Thinking: ensuring business objectives are achieved by collaboratively designing and implementing a strategy with customers and employees.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is finally coming into its own. Technologies such as ChatGPT, DALL-E, driver-assistance, and autonomous robots are clear signs of an AI-driven market shift. AI technologies, in particular machine learning (ML), are being applied in all sectors of the economy. Your organization is likely to soon be running projects to apply and even develop AI if it isn’t already doing so. Are you ready?

This talk overviews AI and how AI/ML initiatives work. We also explore several critical challenges, including the experimental nature of AI initiatives, that data quality is critical to your success, the high failure rate of AI initiatives, and the ethical considerations surrounding AI. We examine the implications of these challenges and work through strategies to address them.

Digital transformation is a marathon, not a sprint. Companies that embed technologies across their businesses to drive fundamental change require a firm understanding of their people, process, and technology.

What is the benefit of these efforts? Increased efficiency, greater business agility, and unlocking new value for employees, customers, and shareholders.

Join us at the June Dinner Meeting to hear Francisco Avalos share strategies, protocols, recommendations, and research on digital transformation in the workforce today. You will have the opportunity to engage with both your peers and the speaker as you learn the fundamentals and the foundational structure required to Execute Digital Transformation Projects within your organization.

Learning Objectives:

Identify and describe key transformation concepts.
Describe what drives transformation and why transformation competencies are critical to business success.
Identify transformation challenges and success factors that may impact an organization’s ability to design and implement transformation.

For many organizations, getting reliable resource estimates for upcoming projects can be a lengthy, burdensome process. Often many busy, senior resources are solicited for inputs into the estimates which can cause delays in getting the estimates or take valuable resource away from higher priority work. This presentation will demonstrate a technique that organizations can apply to significantly reduce the need for manual inputs and help generate estimates more quickly.

Sara is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don’t miss this stellar session where you’ll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Sara!

Project Managers are frustrated. Organizations have more work than ever and traditionally planned strategies aren't working or aren't prioritized. The Process Alchemist strategy unleashes efficiency for your team by creating a hybrid project management methodology to increase efficiency, enable accurate delivery, and reduce frustration across the project team. Ashleigh will detail how to create this strategy she has successfully implemented over the last 6 years to effectively intake, plan, prioritize, execute, and close out your project. The best part: this process is flexible enough to meet changing needs and can be repeated across teams, organizations, and industries.

Most project management approaches incorporate a lessons learned activity. But many organisations do little more than document experience and file it on a shelf, which is less like lessons learned and more like lessons identified, or even worse, lessons ignored. 

Some people in the PM community think lessons learned is so broken it’s not worth doing. Ken Burrell thinks there is still value to be had, with the application of some pragmatic primping. 

This session (based on his book) looks at how organisations learn from projects, how it goes wrong, and offers some ways to fend off failures.

During the journey to create the Influential PMO YouTube channel, Stuart identified some interesting similarities to how social media content is created and how projects are managed.  He also observed that whilst some project management approaches can help content creators; he also captured the skills and approaches used every day by content creators that would improve how we work in the project management.  This presentation shares those lessons with you.

As the project economy continues to grow rapidly, the importance of PMO organizations becomes increasingly more visible. PMO organizations are the enablers of both a company’s vision and its successful execution. Depending on the level of maturity of a company and their PMO practices and considering the quick changes companies go through regularly to stay relevant, it is expected to see discrepancies between vision and execution. This lack of alignment is what we call PMyOpia.

During this session, we will discuss how to diagnose this condition that can affect PMOs of all sizes and experience. We will look at three key areas in which PMO organizations play a critical role: Execution, Enablement and Reporting. After looking at examples to illustrate the symptoms, we will discuss best practices and methodologies available to curb the effects of this condition. Specifically we will discuss how using Objective Key Results (OKRs), gated processes and scoring can help translate vision into tangible execution guidance.

More sessions are being added each week until the summit in September!

In an ever-changing world, countless PMO leaders face the challenge of rethinking their PMOs to ensure they deliver genuine value to the C-level and their organizations. Numerous solutions claim to offer the perfect PMO model, a magic pill for guaranteed success. However, hands-on experience in the PMO trenches reveals that returning to the basics and concentrating on what truly matters is the key to making our PMO's value recognized and ensuring its sustainability and future.

In the last few years, Americo Pinto has been granted the unique opportunity to closely observe the evolution of hundreds of PMOs from various countries as members of the PMO Global Alliance – the largest PMO community worldwide. In his engaging session, he will share valuable insights gleaned from this extraordinary learning experience, inspiring you to reassess your assumptions and ideas on how to make your PMO indispensable to your organization.

The Benefits Management Office is the next-generation Strategic, Transformation, Vision, and Enterprise Management Office; The BMO focuses on the organization, and how projects serve operational excellence and successful transformations with sustainable impact. The BMO provides the following functions/benefits for the organization:

- Concentrating on strategy implementation
- Enhancing governance, sponsorship, steering committee accountabilities, and roles.
- Integrating projects and operations to break silos
- Leading success of organizational, cultural, and digital transformation
- Achieving sustainable impact, growth, and higher ROI

PMOs aren't just cost centers, they're strategic enablers for their organizations. In fact, if leveraged smartly, they can support their organizations through economic downturns and fortify them for strong post-recession performance. This presentation makes a clear case for PMOs' role in this capacity and shows exactly what PMOs must do to execute this role to perfection.

Anne's presentation covers the core focus of one of AH Consulting's six solution pathways: AH VMO - a framework ("VMO Hub") to elevate the role of the Project Management Office to a Value Management Office and institutionalize value creation and delivery across the organization.

This presentation begins with a context-setting story about when and why value management became a practice focus for Anne and AH Consulting. It first covers limitations associated with the ‘project’ metaphor and traditional PMOs that a value-aligned approach addresses. Next, the audience is introduced to value stream management constructs, connection to ‘project-to-product’ orientation, flow framework and metrics practices, and Lean/Agile alignment. Anne finishes with the introduction of the VMO Hub conceptual framework and thoughts on possible next steps to further consider how this transition can benefit the organization with ideas on approach. The presentation also contains links to selected and recommended resources Anne used in its creation.

Join industry leader Erick Means in an engaging session as he shares insights and best practices on building a high-performing PMO. With his extensive experience as a PMO, Technology, and Professional Services Executive overseeing 15,000 projects, Erick brings a wealth of knowledge in optimizing processes, driving successful initiatives, and delivering measurable results. Discover the key strategies and practical tips to establish and elevate your PMO for enhanced performance and organizational success. Don't miss this opportunity to gain valuable insights from a seasoned expert in project management and PMO transformation.

How to bridge the gap of your PMO reputation as a tactical IT organization to being an impactful business organization!

In this session, you will learn how Curtis Jenkins developed a strategy with his talented team and the 5 major tactics used to go from an IT PMO to an Enterprise PMO that is sought out as the “go-to” organization for projects at his company. Curtis believes that if he had known these major tactics when he started 9 years ago that he could have taken 1-2 years to bring the PMO to an EPMO vs the 5 years it took to mature to the level of executive leadership and participation.

Products and Projects cost money to deliver. Yet most project, program, product leaders feel disconnected from the financial equation that drives our initiatives. Ironically, executives feeling pressure to report an ROI on their initiatives will look to us for answers. And we owe it to them, our stakeholders - and ourselves - to have reasonable answers.

This may sound unfair & dysfunctional, but agile product management pioneer Luke Hohmann says the 21st century has made this is OUR job. This hard-hitting interview will ask tough questions like: Why should I shoulder financial responsibilities owned by someone higher up the organization? How can I juggle getting things done while also owning the business case? Doesn't profit involve revenue? And doesn't revenue involve pricing? How do I make this all fit together?

Where should I even begin?

Whether you are an agile product owner or a senior program manager, this provocative session will challenge your assumptions about your role.

Most of the critical future of work changes can be clustered into themes: project management as a strategic muscle, role of project managers changes, the project economy, and balance between transparency and autonomy in experience cultures.  As such, the landscape is changing and the ten pillars of project management have emerged. These critical ten pillars in the work of this author, with Kerzner and Vargas, will influence project management for the next decade and the performance of future excellent organizations.

More sessions are being added each week until the summit in September!

Despite the research showing coaching to be a powerful tool for developing sustainable change capability in the people of an organisation, it remains one of the most underutilised and misunderstood skill sets. This workshop equips you and your managers with coaching basics to embed change capability within your organisation, ensuring understanding, involvement, and proactive focus in change. Avoiding a dependency culture on leaders who provide all the answers or painful tactics of coercion, coaching instead empowers change leaders at all levels. Coaching, distinct from mentoring or consulting, supports individuals to process situations and make their own decisions, fostering greater investment in their actions. The workshop and workbook offer practical guidance for integrating coaching skills into everyday conversations for successful change, including identifying resistance sources, assessing involvement levels, using essential coaching questions, and enabling individuals to manage their own transition through change.

The CQ® System for Developing Change Intelligence® was launched a decade ago. Since then, the approach has helped tens of thousands of people and hundreds of organizations around lead through changes ranging from the pandemic to digital transformation to shifting workplace demographics. What have we learned? The answer is a great many lessons, which are directly applicable to the IMPACT audience, spanning from engaging sponsors and stakeholders, to creating change-capable cultures, to bolstering our own influence and power to make a positive difference. Join us for a provocative conversation, dynamic insights, and actionable implications that will benefit your organization, team, and career.

Shockingly, 11.4% of company investment is still being wasted due to poor project performance. This means that more than 2 trillion a year is wasted by companies worldwide because of the ineffective implementation of business strategy. The reality is that we have spent so much time focused on choosing the right framework or methodology to address projects when the real cracks in the process are related to our project teams and people. For a project to be successful, we need people to implement behavioral and organizational change, which is often overlooked.

But let’s be honest. Ensuring that you have fully thought through the impact of projects on your teams, leaders and clients before your big kick-off meeting sounds strenuous and time consuming – and is about as exciting as watching paint dry to your project team and business leaders. However, what IS exciting is having a successful, impactful project which transforms your organization coupled with a comprehensive change management plan so that that transformation sticks! This means implementing activities that get results which are meaningful, measurable, monetizable and lead to less rework.

Join 23-year project management and change management expert Candice Benson, CEO of Benson Consulting, to focus on a new approach to driving projects aligned with the motivations of your people. For more than two decades, Candice has been in the trenches helping organizations like Pfizer, Fidelity, and Comcast and a who’s who of industry-defining brands to think differently about how they approach project delivery.

In this common-wisdom busting session, Candice will share just-in-time insights, including:
● The surprising data that undermines the status quo belief that building a robust training approach is the best way to ensure adoption of the change your project is driving.
● 3 Warning signs that the cracks in your projects are about to lead to burn-out, frustration and missed deliverables.
● 3 “Champions” you need to identify on your project team, as well as how to empower them, equip them, and amplify them, if you want your project to be successful.
● The road-tested framework every organization needs to ensure their projects not only deliver on time, on scope and on budget but that the changes are adopted.
● Real-world examples of organizations which are putting these strategies into action, and the biggest lessons learned, regrets, and pay-it-forward advice.

This must-attend session is custom-crafted for Project Managers, PMO managers, and other leaders who have a vested interest in ensuring their organization’s project investment is not wasted.

Building organisational change maturity is a topic relevant for all organisational units initiating change, the Strategic PMO is no exception. An organisation's change maturity will greatly impact its ability to transform at the speeds needed to stay relevant in these fast-moving times. By assessing an organisation's Change maturity with a model gaging level of Change maturity ‘as is’ factors related to levels in the organisation and actionable growth areas, we can support organisations to understand their Change maturity level, and how to develop this alongside tailoring the approach to value creation for increased return on investment. Further still, a model that can be extended into a framework will be even more supportive to organisations seeking to effectively reaching strategic goals and outcomes. From recent research, there are two main types of maturity we should consider. The first is the actual ability of an organisation to change, to agilely move with the needs of the time. By creating a holistic picture of different types of change in an organisation, we open up options for strategic choice and best transformation path development. The second is the maturity of key disciplines that both initiate change and need to remain adaptable, often calling for a higher level of maturity. examples of these disciplines could be project management, data or quality management. The outcome of this research was a model to manage the change capability and a framework prototype that could unite the various types of discipline maturity in one overview for gathering insights and diagnosing next steps.

Clarity of intention is critical to delivering successful projects. Everyone involved - business sponsors/managers and project delivery specialists - must be on the same page to succeed. This requires a Shared Language of Agreement that define the Desired Outcomes - what the future looks like when it is working just right.

This presentation will explain simple techniques to quickly enable everyone involved in the delivery process to merge the different pictures in their heads to a single one where everyone can see the overall picture and where their own contribution fits.

The Response Factor is the fastest way to stay on track for sustainable performance. Instead of reacting to change and uncertainty you learn how to take response-ability and be in control of your mental and emotional resilience. In this keynote participants will learn to focus, be calm and confident to take on challenges.

After 20 years in the industry, working in several positions, projects, and companies all related to PM, QA, CM, and lastly as Head of PMO, Gregor has found himself struggling to hold together the project execution portfolio and satisfy all PMO stakeholders, especially the discordant expectations of different sponsors.

He quit the job from an unhealthy environment, as he now knows, it was, and started to learn, investing heavily in himself. “Well, that was the best decision ever.”

Gregor started his own Freelance PMO Consulting business to be the help and support he has never found in Slovenia. The trigger was based on the PMO Strategies IMPACT Engine System Program/IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind group with Laura Barnard, which he joined. He experienced so many aha moments when connecting new knowledge with his former experiences and got all the needed tools and peer support that he can now use and pass on to his clients.

His biggest challenge, passion, and satisfaction lie in helping organizations and people overcome change blocks while reaching the highest possible value in business strategy execution. When building or transforming a PMO, people need to go through cultural change, from operations to PM/PMO, and finally to a business mindset by overcoming Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement of the new way of working (ADKAR – Change Management model).

Gregor is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don’t miss this stellar session where you’ll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Gregor!

Change is constant and if you’re not ahead of it, you’re behind it. This session dives into how PMO leaders can become catalyst for successful organizational change with insight-led decision making to drive value and mitigate risk. See how project portfolio management software can help bridge the execution gap between strategic decisions making and project activity in real-time, enabling successful organizational change programs. Organizational synchronization is key to ensuring business value is delivered and organizational change programs are executed seamlessly. Become a catalyst for organizational change by leveraging the power of insight-led PPM software.

Concepts like resource, portfolio, and project management aren't new. Napoleon Bonaparte mastered all three more than 200 years ago. Based on Jerry’s international bestseller “Napoleon on Project Management,” this lively session will explore how to apply Napoleon's timeless strategies to your own PMO.

Gain the ultimate business advantage through this colorful approach to learning the skills needed for success in today’s workplace.

– Learn to apply Napoleon’s research, record-keeping, and organization methods to your PMO initiatives for better results.
– Gain an upper hand by understanding the dynamic between project management and strategic leadership.
– Learn to apply the wisdom of this military leader in your own personal and professional spheres of influence -- while avoiding the pitfalls that led to Waterloo.

We tend to think about motivation in terms of carrots and sticks - forms of external motivation. Motivating knowledge workers requires tapping into their internal motivators - striving for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We'll describe ways of engaging those often hard to identify motivators and talk about how the focus for intrinsic motivation changes across generations and experience level.

PMOs continue to be challenged about where they add value to change delivery and the organisation, and despite of that, more and more PMOs are being set up in organisations, they’re becoming ubiquitous, so how can that be?

In this session, Eileen Roden from the House of PMO, uncover where the real value of the PMO is and address the elephant in the room – the friction that exists between the PMO and delivery teams.

The session will cover:

The potential for friction between the PMO and delivery teams
What the underlying causes are for why the friction exists
How to work with the friction and how friction helps deliver higher value for everyone involved in change delivery

Attendees will leave the session with an understanding of what both sides are there to do – and how they can work together so everyone is a winner – the PMO, delivery teams and ultimately the organisation.

Storytelling is a skill that has been getting a lot of press lately and one that PMO/SDO leaders and project managers will benefit from cultivating. In this unique session, international speaker, Dawn Mahan, will share several stories from her upcoming book: Welcome to Projectland.

Dawn’s stories from her years of working with top brands around the world and hands-on experience leading projects across industries will resonate with everyone who has ever participated in or led a project.

This interactive experience will also get you thinking about your own career stories that can help amplify your leadership profile.

This is a recorded demo of a coaching session with PM Leader, Dawn Mahan.

As an audience member, you will experience a real coaching session live and others will see how coaching can help be a better project leader. The topic that we explore was chosen by our sample client Dawn.

Coaching sessions are usually confidential. Dawn Mahan gave permission for this session to be recorded and shared as part of the Impact Summit.

The presentation will shed lights on the significance and benefits of ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) in today’s world, in order to work towards sustainability development goals and save the planet for future generations.

Moreover, this presentation will coin the term “Green PMO”, as it will illustrate 3 workable models to integrate ESG into PMO practices

We all have a story of our attempts, setbacks and failures. In this discussion, Paul will delve into his own. From moving cities to quitting without another role and taking 6 months off to find himself.

This session is an honest and humorous reflection on where he’s been and what it took to get to where he is now – an opportunity to commiserate or celebrate his experience.

It’s not all stories though he’ll share a practical process he uses now which he wishes he knew before.

And at Laura’s request, he’s also going to let you in on little something he calls the PMO Hokey Pokey.

Paul is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don’t miss this stellar session where you’ll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Paul!

Susanne has first-hand experience of how stressful project management can be. As a result of working in a high-pressure environment for several years, her body became infested with stress to the point where she could barely walk. She was forced to slow down and make some important changes in her work and life.  

Susanne’s story is not unusual. Almost all project managers have experienced stress on their projects and far too many suffer from ill health as a result. Whereas short bursts of stress can have a positive effect on performance, prolonged stress is harmful and can cause burnout. In this presentation Susanne will share her personal story and provide tips and insights that can help you stay clear of negative stress and work within your zone of peak performance.

Susanne’s presentation will help you to:

Balance positive and negative stress
Avoid chronic stress that can lead to burn-out
Understand why you are prone to overworking yourself
Set boundaries and deal with challenging client behaviour
Respond appropriately to situations as opposed to over-reacting
Develop skills that lead to more productive thoughts and habits
Increase your wellbeing as a project and change manager 

More sessions are being added each week until the summit in September!

As a PMO leader, are you struggling to build strategic influence with executives and earn that coveted “seat at the table”? This hands-on workshop provides frameworks and techniques to enhance your visibility, strengthen executive relationships, and position your PMO as a value-driving partner in advancing organizational strategy.

In this session, you’ll learn:

A framework for defining and tracking PMO metrics that clearly communicate value and IMPACT to leadership teams.
Relationship-building strategies to become a trusted advisor to executives and leaders across the organization.
Tactics for enhancing your team’s visibility and participation in key strategic initiatives and decisions.
Approaches for evolving your services and offerings to directly enable business objectives and address pain points.

The workshop format allows you to apply these concepts through hands-on exercises. You’ll leave with a tailored plan for increasing your team’s strategic influence and accelerating your IMPACT over the next 1-2 years.

Everyone wants to be agile these days. But it's hard to know where to begin, and what pitfalls to avoid. That's why the role of Agile Coach is a hot career trend these days. Unfortunately, understanding the role is just as hard as the agile thing itself. What do they even do? What skills are required? How do we know they're actually helping? Whether you are interested in becoming an Agile Coach or simply hiring one, this session is for you.

Recent research has found the Agile movement has overlooked diversity, equity, and inclusion for the last several decades, leaving many people behind. Why? Weren’t Agile methods supposed to emphasize empowerment and collaboration for everyone? Why are women and people of color not getting the same experiences as others? and what should we do about it on our teams and in our organizations? In this provocative interview, Apriel Biggs shares trends, insights, and actions for adding more equity to your agility.

Apriel is one of the many IMPACT Engine System and IMPACT Accelerator Mastermind program participants speaking this year. Don’t miss this stellar session where you’ll see just how much IMPACT these programs have helped our participants make over the years.

We are so incredibly proud of Apriel!

Join us to level up your personal leadership – as a leader with more self-awareness, situational adaptiveness, balanced presence, and power, "Unlocking the Full Potential for Women in Agile Leadership: Strategies for Personal Growth and Development"  

In this interview, we will explore various strategies and techniques for women to unlock their full potential in achieving personal growth and development. We will discuss the importance of setting clear goals, identifying strengths and weaknesses of societal habits, and how to start to develop a growth mindset. We will also share tips for staying motivated and overcoming obstacles along the way. Whether you are looking to improve your career as a woman in leadership, relationships with other women in your organization, or your personal well-being, this interview will provide you with practical tools and insights for reaching your full potential. So join us on this journey of self-discovery and transformation! 

It’s all the rage these days for executives to declare “We need to do more with less and do it fast”. Then, they’ll declare that our job now involves driving agile-at-scale, by the end of the year. It’s hard to argue with the drivers. Who do we involve now versus later? From among all our departments, where do we begin? How do we choose from over a dozen competing scaling frameworks? Why aren’t we making progress? Indeed, how do we even know when we’re making progress?

In this energetic session, you’ll get insights on the hot trend of “agile transformation” that will move you from confused to confident.

For many executives, Agile methods are fundamentally about "going faster" or "doing more with less".  This leaves many teams and professionals in an Agile workplace that is fundamentally more toxic and more prone to burnout. 

How did this happen? Wasn't it a key principle of the Agile movement to pursue sustainable pace? Weren't we promised a people-centric office?  

Join us for a compelling discussion on what went wrong, and how we can restore more balance to our work.

More sessions are being added each week until the summit in September!

Join us for a lively discussion with the 2022 PMOGA PMO Influencer of the Year Semi-Finalists answering all of your questions on how to make the biggest IMPACT with your PMO, transformation, or strategy delivery office.

PMOs as Strategic Drivers: Unlocking Greater Business Value

Project management offices (PMOs) play an integral role in executing project delivery and operations. But how can PMOs elevate their IMPACT to drive greater strategic value? This dynamic panel explores ways PMOs can go beyond project administration to become true strategic partners.

Key discussion points include:

• What are the biggest opportunities for PMOs to influence strategy and not just deliver projects?
• How can PMOs align with and support overall business goals rather than work in isolation?
• What skills and capabilities do PMO leaders need to provide strategic value?

Join us as our expert panel shares insights and advice for empowering PMOs to partner with business leaders, influence strategic decisions, and unlock the next level of value and organizational impact. The future role of PMOs demands it – are you ready to transform your PMO into a strategic powerhouse?

Join us for a lively discussion with the 2022 PMOGA PMO Influencer of the Year Semi-Finalists answering all of your questions on how to make the biggest IMPACT with your PMO, transformation, or strategy delivery office.

Exploring the Evolving Value of PMOs

Project management offices (PMOs) have grown beyond their traditional tactical focus to become strategic assets that drive organizational success. But does “strategic value” remain an empty buzzword or can PMOs truly demonstrate business impact? This candid panel explores the changing role of PMOs, especially in large enterprises.

Key questions include:

• Is “strategic value” real or a fad when it comes to PMOs?
• How do specialized PMOs like Strategic Management Offices and Transformation Offices differ from traditional PMOs? Why do they exist and how do they interact?
• Most importantly, how can PMOs showcase value to executives in tangible, meaningful metrics?

Join us for a thought-provoking discussion as our panel of PMO experts and leaders delves into these critical issues shaping the future of project management offices and their perceived value within organizations.

CAUTION!
THIS WILL BE VERY DIFFERENT THAN YOUR TYPICAL Q&A DISCUSSION…we're all about real talk and truth bombs you may not hear anywhere else!

Do you remember back in the good old days when we used to sit around a pub or coffee shop with some of your colleagues talking about what it’s really like to work in PMOs? That’s what this is like, but virtual.

We’ll have some fun, answer your questions, and talk about what it’s really like to be in PMOs and project management. Bring your favorite cocktail, mocktail, coffee, or tea, and kick your feet up as you learn a little and laugh a little more!

Asking the right questions gets people to think deeply, challenge their own assumptions and reach good decisions. As a PMO, the ability to ask powerful questions is a core skill which can significantly amplify the value of the services you offer. This presentation looks at the skill of not only asking powerful questions, it will also shine the spotlight on the complementary skill of active listening.
Using real PMO examples I will explore some of the theory and directs benefits of using these skills effectively. Don’t underestimate the power of the ‘soft’ stuff. Let’s get back to basics and remind ourselves how we can make good PMO great.

Most PMOs have too many projects and this causes failure, delay, frustration, and endless chaos.
Bring your sleuthing skills as we unravel the root causes of this crime.
Together we will solve the mystery of how to prevent “too many projects” from happening to you.
Like Sherlock Holmes we will base our investigation on real science and on research into human behavior, allowing us to banish this project serial killer forever.

Many organizations are evolving their Project Management Office (PMO) evolve into a Value Management Office (VMO). Scott and Laura explore what this means, why this is happening, and how you can go about this in a safe and timely manner.

HELP! All we keep hearing about is Agile! Be agile, do agile, think agile, agile is a mindset! BUT, what if your organization / department is not ‘ready’ for agile! Are you ‘stuck’ with “waterfall” – or – “traditional” project management? OR… are you in the lane of “well, we are doing iterative waterfall and we are just ‘calling’ it agile”! There IS a way to still be “waterfall” and bring some “Agile” principles in! It’s W-AGILE!!! This may not be an ‘official thing’ (wink, wink) – but, I will share some experiences and tips to help Project Managers and PMO Leaders to either lean out your waterfall – or- help you baby step toward Agile. You don’t wanna miss it!

The world is changing faster than ever, and the next disruption is just around the corner. Many companies are therefore well on their way on an agile transformation to become more adaptive and resilient, but many experience that the transformation does not provide the business value they had imagined in advance and new challenges emerge.In this presentation, we will dive into why some of the challenges arise and how to get your agile transformation right. Based on Complexity Thinking and Dave Snowden’s Cynefin framework we will look at where the agile principles and methods help – but also where to take care and where an agile approach does more harm than good.

We know all too well about the problem of scope creep within traditional projects, and agile has gained in popularity due to its emphasis on embracing change. This does not mean that scope is no longer an issue though. This presentation will focus on two concepts pivotal within agile; definition of done and definition of ready. We will explore who is involved in defining what is doable and the cooperation required between the client, the team and the agile project manager.

If you’re trying to figure out how to increase speed and get to outcomes faster for your projects, looking to just incorporate more Agile best practices, or are maybe confused about where to start and what Agile really means anyway, this session is for you. We’re going to talk about the fundamentals of Agile and how your project teams and PMO can benefit from adding Agile into your project process – starting with simple baby steps.

Are you using an established Agile framework in your company, but you feel things got stuck and you cannot improve your teams? Sprint by sprint you think things got mechanic, and no real WOW? — You need to ask the right questions to ask to diagnose where your company is in terms of Agility. In a framework based on key Agile values, I show you how to use Accountability, Learning, Motivation and Autonomy to unlock the power of your teams! I present you to A.L.M.A., the essence of your company! By the use of real-life use cases, you learn how to assess Agility within your teams using the framework, and leave with action items on the right areas to focus. Are you ready to take the next step into your Agile journey?

With limited time we need to focus on practical ways to develop our skills. In our session, Elise we will discuss the 6 essential skills for 2025 - Practical tips on how to grow and apply at work

During this presentation, Emma-Ruth will explore the future of PMO now that the ‘new normal’ points more and more towards remote working and digital services, with practical tips on how to digitalize your PMO whilst avoiding any compromise on governance, standards, and community activities.

Eileen will talk about the PMO Competency Framework – how it benefits both individuals and organisations. There’s a lot to go into – the competences, knowledge, skills and behaviours – in the different levels of roles in the different contexts of PMOs.

Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, big data and analytics, machine learning and deep learning, internet of things, blockchain, quantum computing — all of these tech trends (and more!) are not just accelerating exponentially, they are compounding upon each other in innovative, synergistic ways that very few of us can anticipate. How do you plot a career path or even a learning strategy in such a fast moving and uncertain landscape; how do you prepare yourself for the unknown? This presentation will address the bewilderment that many of you feel when faced with the emergence of new, difficult to understand technologies and will give you the mindset and framework you need to embrace this change and find your place in the new world.

Choice is always complex. Humans prefer simplicity, that more often leads to poor choice, limited planning, and rapid execution of poorly adopted results. We call for diversity, though operate in constrained polarity, isolation, and for rapid results without consideration to 200,000 years of human evolution and social psychology. We are never right OR wrong, we are always a blend of right AND wrong. We choose the present want over the long term need, we accommodate immediate demands over long term success. We act before we think. A better understanding of the human mechanism aids development of more successful strategies and processes – resulting in change that people both adopt and support sustainably.

In the next five years, the world will see more projects than ever. The reconstruction of the economy, healthcare, social care, and society at large after the devastating global pandemic crisis, will be unprecedented in human history. According to McKinsey, Governments’ have announced $10 trillion in reconstruction funds just in the first two months of the crisis, which is three times more than the response to the 2008–09 financial crisis. These are millions of projects, which will need millions of project managers and PMOs. However, despite this positive outlook, significant trends will put at stake the project management profession and the role of the PMO that we have learned to know in the past 40 years. We should consider these signals as an urgent call for profound change in our practices and a much needed in our competencies. A small price to pay compared to the unique opportunity that the project management profession has to lead what I call our new world driven by change.

Coaching has traditionally been available to problem people and to high-potential employees. Group coaching offers the rest of us access to the wonders of coaching. Many people have no idea what to expect, are confused about the difference between mentors, consultants, trainers, counselors and coaches. Attendees will discover how coaching can help them be their best – in all walks of life. Attendees will be able to explain what coaching is and how it works Attendees will have a selection of coaching tools and questions to work with in order to make a positive impact on the people around them.

Ethical behavior, decisions and interactions are core to establishing the credibility of our PMOs. In this session Dev Ramcharan talks about how the use and adaptation of PMI’s code of ethics for PMs can act as an anchor for our PMOs and can enhance their reputation for reliability and trustworthiness as sources of truth.

How do you lead, how do you influence as a project manager, with no official authority? Gathering pertinent information for a project, building rapport, facilitating meetings, knowing what tools and techniques to use and when. In order to be successful as a leader, there are different methods for solving different types of problems.

Since the early 2000s "trust" has been the "gold" standard trait that teams should invest in developing so that they can achieve performance results with less friction and stress. Yet, many teams still fall short of fulfilling their potential. The missing link is "respect." If team leaders stop at trust the team will fall short of achieving its potential. As we've seen in recent years in society in general basic respect for fellow humans seems to be lacking. You can trust someone you don't respect, but you cannot respect someone you don't trust, so it's time to get beyond trust and aspire to a higher standard.

The pandemic has been terrible and continues to challenge us, but it is also the single greatest opportunity you will ever have to shift and grow your business. Healthy people are our most important asset and human connection is about trust. When we know you as a person, we can connect to you. What you have to say becomes something we want to hear. We now realize technology is a necessity as we continue to need to stay at a safe distance from others. Now, more than ever, we are depending on technology to both navigate and change the outcomes of the pandemic — from working remotely, to virtual meetings and networking, to online learning. Technology offers up new ways of doing things and new opportunities while presenting its own challenges. But … How do we continue to connect and lead on a human level? Finding the New Path Forward What matters now is finding the right “recipe” to create those new paths and opportunities for collaboration, connecting, and having fun. Many of the main recipe ingredients needed will be praise, gratitude, and employee happiness and retention.

Behind every successful project is a sponsor—a role identified as one of the most critical to project success by the Project Management Institute. So, how can you develop a strong partnership and what can you do when the sponsor is not engaged? What steps can be taken to help drive that engagement and ensure there is buy-in at the senior level? This workshop helps project managers, and their teams build meaningful relationships with their project sponsors, regardless of project management methodology. Examining the role of the project sponsor throughout the project lifecycle, we explore common misunderstandings between PM and sponsor, and how to address them in ways that foster trust and facilitate progress.

In the end the only value of projects is the execution of the company strategy! The OKR framework (Objectives & Key Results) is wildly used in leading tech companies to adjust the initiatives with the strategy and adjust all teams amongst each other which empowers dramatic positive results. The value of an PMO is directly related to how good the projects (initiatives) are aligned with strategy and executed – to achieve this the PMO is the best place to drive the OKR process. If you look at google-trends – OKR is now to be the next agile. So it’s a good chance for all PMO leaders to really get in touch with the company strategy and execution. A certain chance to get into the real necessary power to change the world!

Organizations in both the public and private sectors have successfully delivered outputs and results from their initiatives; however, many of them missed the opportunity to track the realization of planned benefits. Many also reported that they are not sure if the benefits from their initiatives aligned with their organization’s strategic objectives. This presentation discusses the need for a benefits realization framework and what role PMOs have in this service.

Many organizations focus on project execution, but execution can only take you so far. When you look at the best project organizations, those that consistently deliver 90%+ of projects successfully, they also focus on portfolio management.This hands-on workshop will cover: What is portfolio management? Why does portfolio management matter? Key components of portfolio managementGetting started with portfolio management.

In this interview, Matt Muldoon will explain how there is a lot of ‘hype’ or ‘talk’ around Artificial Intelligence and automation in general for business processes.Many markets are up to speed with the latest and greatest in tech, but we believe that the project portfolio management (PPM) market seems to be a bit behind.Listen in and learn why PMOs should adopt these technologies.

The goal of our project execution engines is to deliver (lots of) value to the organization. But we often don’t manage them that way. We have learned in our factories to balance the capacity of the various steps in our processes and to limit the flow of jobs into the system. We see the inventory build up and risk becoming obsolete before it can be consumed. Why, then, do we treat our projects differently? In this session we will talk about ways to meter the input to the project execution system to maximize the value of our output and dramatically reduce value lost work that goes stale because it is not completed soon enough. The core of the system is having a list of prioritized projects ready to execute and pulling when there is capacity to start another one. In an ideal world this will mean that we never need to trade priorities of the running projects – we’ve only put as many into the system as we can execute efficiently in parallel. But the world isn’t ideal and there will still be conflicts between the running projects – though many fewer than before. When conflicts occur we often prioritize ineffectually. We’ll talk about principles that can lead us to wiser decisions when choosing when and whether to give a project with a problem a boost.

Amanda will discuss why data driven decision making is vital for Program/Portfolio/PMO and business leadership.

We all know that project management is a multifaceted knowledge-area profession. It still evolves as our world evolves. We attempt to describe, define, and make its boundaries finite by developing project methodologies and, in the same breath, claim that they should be flexible and adaptable to project’s context. Since standardized processes can be optimize, we and our organizations make the methodologies rigid and inflexible. Then, your friendly project managers are put into positions to accomplish almost impossible feats to deliver all project’s types to the only one, organizationally mandated, methodology.In this session, the participants will be engaged in brief review of major project management methodologies and analyze their assumptions. We will touch upon how to measure the project value, best outcomes and value for entire organization. Lastly, the presenter, from his own experience, will propose several models which for methodology fit to (A) organizational structure and (B) desired project’s outcome and (C) end product.

Long-term PMO success is tied to the value the PMO provides to the organization. Too often PMO Leaders fail to engage Organizational Leaders when establishing a PMO and as a result PMO fail to meet Stakeholder expectations. In this discussion, Laura and PMO Joe will discuss the importance of early collaboration between PMO Leaders and Organizational Leaders building a shared vision for the PMO to deliver value to the organization.

Resource Management and Capacity Planning are frequently cited among today’s top pain points faced by organizations worldwide. Indeed, trying to optimize limited organizational resources in a climate of rapid change and constantly shifting demand can be challenging at best. Yet information on how to navigate these often murky waters has been scarce—until now.This session, presented by bestselling author Jerry Manas (The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook, McGraw-Hill), introduces the Capacity Quadrant model, a framework that allows for quickly achieving maturity in resource management and capacity planning in four key areas:* Visibility – broadening your view to gain a more holistic picture of demand, a truer picture of capacity, and a better sense of the variables that impact resource productivity and workload.* Prioritization – understanding which work is most important, and how it relates to strategies, goals, and value.* Optimization – focusing on making the most efficient use of your resources across the right mix of work.* Integration – planning in cycles at multiple levels of the organization to keep people, work, money, and strategies aligned in the face of constant change.Learn how the Capacity Quadrant can help smooth the way to greater business agility, fewer fire drills, and passionate, productive people.

Covid-19 did more than just cause a worldwide lock-down, it highlighted the fact that some of our current PPM practices are potentially causing harm. Resources don’t code, resources aren’t creative problem solvers, people are. The good news is simply by shifting our mental model, measurable productivity goes up, benefits are realized, strategy gets executed and people will become engaged in their work once again.

According to Gartner’s recent study on strategic workforce planning, the workforce is struggling to meet today’s demands and it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find external resources to backfill because of the competitive nature of organizations allowing people to work anywhere and in whatever way they choose. This creates a challenge for PMO and project portfolio managers trying to reach an optimal capacity balance across the portfolio. In this session, we are discussing how to enable our workforce to become more invested, avoid burnout, and deliver under a continually changing dynamic environment.

Difficult sponsors can quickly derail any project. In this workshop you will learn the seven secrets to deal with difficult sponsors. Using these key techniques, you will be able to develop your sponsor relationship, increase the level of communication and conduct engagement activities to easily turn your difficult sponsor into a sponsor superstar. Increase your project success, by guiding sponsors to be change leaders instead of change resisters.Takeaways:• Identify sponsor strengths and communication competence.• Develop sponsor vision and opportunity for impact.• Leverage internal and external networks to increase sponsor status.• Create virtual challenges, events and summits for effective sponsor engagement.

Joe Perzel will cover many topics in this presentation to include:How to Build a strong, trusting relationship with the sponsorProject success means managing outcomes through influence: both your influence and the sponsor’sHow to successfully manage your sponsor – without them knowing they are being “managed”How “Asking a question” is a key tool in your toolbeltWhy, when and how to prepare your sponsor for success – understanding their strengths and weaknessesTypical Sponsor Issues – and how to overcome them

PMO directors are increasingly being challenged to “prove” the value of their organization. Not all PMOs are designed the same and not all organizations are mature enough to accept the change that a PMO can deliver. Value is an individual interpretation defined by the buyer and can be described as a relationship between quality and cost or the trade-off between investment and costs. PMOs can bring value to an organization in several ways which is dependent on a number of factors such as the type of PMO, its maturity level, its purpose, or the range of services provided.

You know your work makes an impact and leads to positive financial return-on-investment for the organization, but do you know to communicate it?Join this session to learn the top five skills of PMO leaders that drive ROI.During this session, you’ll learn:

What is mindsetHow mindset plays a role in ROIThe top five skills of PMO leadersThe Money Talk™ and how to bring financial value into any conversation

You’ve probably heard of the evolution from projects to products. Well that’s just the start. Organizations are beginning to become capability driven – investing not in projects or products but business capabilities. Where does that leave the PMO of the future?

The key to getting people onboard and engaged is to seamlessly blend energy and forward momentum into everything you do related to a new project. If your plans and strategies call for big planning meetings, conference calls with a few others, routine “fill out the forms” meetings, or simply informal discussions about some aspects of the project, you will need to make sure that they are conducted in ways that can harness energy productively. This sessions shows you how to add life to planning sessions and meetings.

True business agility is impossible if execution is disconnected from strategy. Indeed, Gartner now makes a clear distinction between traditional PPM execution tools and strategic portfolio management capabilities. If you’re still only focused on PPM project execution, or you’re using execution tools to try and address strategic portfolio management problems, you’re probably missing the critical capabilities needed to truly drive business transformation.

Every time there is a new version of the PMBoK the speculation runs rampant about how significant the impact of the changes will be and what effect the new Edition will have on the PMP Exam.Relax.Let Lee put you at ease.He has watched closely for significant change since the first Edition was published in 1996 and grew from 119 pages to over 800 pages in the 6th Edition,publishedin 2016. But, the 7th Edition incorporatessubstantialchange yet is less than half the number of pages of the 6th Edition.How does that happen? Lee will explain.

John will discuss how organizations are adopting the expanded strategic view of the performance domains, specifically the capacity and capability along with strategic management, within the ANSI Portfolio Management Standard, 4th edition. He will provide several examples from the US Federal Government, noting the critical linkage the various federal agency strategic planning processes. He will discuss a key related economic framework Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) as a key paradigm if combined with portfolio management can provide enhanced performance.

The future involves uncertainty and rapid change. Agile practices offer one way for teams to approach the unknown and complex with control and confidence, but how do you bring Agile practices into a traditional/ linear organization? For many the road to Agile seems just as unclear, uncertain and complex as the future they’re trying to take control of. But this does not have to be the way, the PMO can take charge of the Agile journey by applying best practice from change management. In this session Karin will present a simple framework for how the PMO can approach and lead Agile transformations using best practice from organizational change management.Topics covered; – Recognize the PMO’s role before, during and after Agile practices are implemented – Define your WHY – Identify and meet learning needs across the organization – Understand and manage the impact of change across People, Process, Technology and Culture – Use Agile principles to implement and learn in order to scale Agile

As an inspirational leader, Curtis Jenkins realized that the most important thing to resolve during any change was getting everyone involved to visualize the same outcome. From that realization sprang the Relation Framework Experience. Using the framework, Jenkins helps entrepreneurs and business leaders overcome the obstacles and challenges they face in business, avoid backsliding into negative habits, and achieve the goals at hand and ultimately turning vision to reality.

Emerging from a crisis. Turning around a failing organization. Proactively driving exponential growth. These are times when we are called upon to step-up our leadership. Clients tell me that during these times their employees look for more direction, more involvement - and more leadership. They say that employees feel disconnected from each other and not part of the bigger picture. They want to be more involved. Sometimes it seems the organization itself is in the way; cross-functional collaboration and organizational hierarchy are at odds with each other. Wouldn’t it be great if these could co-exist? Wouldn’t be great if you could exceed your goals, grow your business and have happy, engaged employees? The ACTIVE leadership model gives leaders a chance to grow their leadership and flex their “leadership muscle.” It can help leaders create a culture for successful growth. Through several case studies, Steve shares how he’s helped executives lead change and grow their organization in the face of increasing competition, advancing technology and a variety of other challenges. The results? You’ll learn how to accelerate change to fuel the growth of your firm and propel your personal leadership success.

Be honest. Ensuring that you have fully thought through the impact of projects on your teams, leaders and clients before your big kick-off meeting sounds strenuous and time consuming – and is about as exciting as watching paint dry to your PMO and business leaders. But what IS exciting is what pulling Change Management planning upfront in your projects could mean for your Project Management Office and team: more impact with less headaches. We’re talking about activities that get results that are meaningful, measurable and monetizable.Perhaps more importantly, implementing change management early focuses on and frees up your most precious resource of all: Brain Power. This means your team can spend more time thinking, innovating and solving your organization’s biggest questions — which plants your team squarely at the table of influencers and elevates them from tactical service delivery to an indispensable strategic partner to the organization. Now, how’s that for exciting?The key, however, is planning for and implementing change in the right way and in the right place. But how is that accomplished? Participants in this session will walk away with strategies for transforming their project organizations, including:• Knowing the 3 most essential questions Project leaders need to ask right now about every process in their organization.• Understanding exactly why a combined PM/CM team focused on managing change is mission-critical to your PMOs success in continuous-improvement-focused organizations.• Implementing 5 specific tools, that when used have proven success in reducing cost, improving efficiency and most importantly, hitting key business success criteria on our projects.

Are you frustrated that no matter what you try, your change initiatives seem to either fail outright or produce gains that don’t last?The reality is that most changes fall woefully short of expectations.Yet, your organization’s ability to compete in this time of massive disruption across industries around the world – and your own career progress – hinges on your ability to lead successful and sustainable change.In this highly interactive keynote/workshop, you’ll get introduced to how to get beyond the buzzwords and leverage a proven formula for change.The CQ® System for Developing Change Intelligence® is based on decades of change leadership in the workplace, years of conducting global research on managing change, and study into the psychology and neuroscience of change.Through real-life examples you’ll learn how to:Engage the brain, inspire the heart, and motivate the hands to get people moving in positive, new directions so change sticksDiagnose your own Change Intelligence, appreciate the strengths and blind spots of your Change Leadership Style, and obtain targeted developmental coaching for improvementReframe resistance from enemy to ally, and learn how to use resistance as a powerful source of information to engage for change up, down, and across your organizationLearn how to coach others to build their CQ, build Change Intelligent teams, and enhance your organization’s collective change capabilitiesEmerge as a more competent and confident – and less stressed and frustrated – leader of change

Michael DePrisco, Chief Operating Officer and Interim Chief Executive Officer at the Project Management Institute (PMI), sat down with Laura Barnard of PMO Strategies, to share some of PMI’s recent findings and thought leadership on how “gymnastic” PMOs are navigating the disruption of COVID-19 and beyond. Mike and Laura touched on a wide range of topics, including how PMO leaders are acting as change makers and impact drivers in helping their organizations deliver on strategy with the highest possible return on investment.

]As they say, the only thing that’s constant is change. And this is no different when you’re setting up a PMO. In fact, it’s further compounded. A new PMO for an organization could result in a variety of changes for stakeholders including adjustments in roles & responsibilities, modifications in reporting/org structures, variations in communication, and more. Some will welcome these changes. Some won’t.This presentation outlines how to manage this change to ensure there is the proper buy-in for your PMO.In this session, you’ll learn:– What happens when change management is ignored– A deeper look why people shy away from change– The change management checklist for each phase of the PMO setup– 5 “don’ts” when tackling change – And more

What is the role of the PMO in Strategic Planning? Is there one? If you lead a PMO do you participate in your organizations Strategic Planning process? This discussion will explore why the PMO leader should be at the table for the organizations strategic planning process and what the contribution may be. Join us for a lively interactive discussion!

Matthew and Logan discuss the 3 principles that PMO leaders can use to strengthen their relationships with senior leaders, including defining goals in terms of needed results rather than deliverables; matching project scope to leadership “readiness,” and aiming for rapid cycle successes to generate momentum.

Having a robust PMO is about having an infrastructure for program management execution. Strategic alignment is about moving the right programs and projects into execution to meet the goals and objectives of the organization. In many ways, managing strategy for the organization uses the same PMO Skills by taking it up a level to managing the portfolio. Just like other programs and projects, there are budgets, schedules, risks and stakeholders to manage. This presentation will examine the similarities and differences between managing the PMO and managing strategy for the organization to become a critical advisor to the CEO and leadership team.

PMO Leaders must interact with executives on the topics of both operations and strategy. The ability to think strategically — and to show it — is a critical task for effectiveness. One reason is that it is better to craft strategy that is good, powerful, clever, coherent, strong, and nuanced (rather than strategy that is bad, weak, stupid, incoherent, and generic). It is critical that PMO leaders be able to suggest appropriate metrics, benefits statements, and problem-solving approaches for both the operational domain and the strategic domain.

Traditionally, the PMO has been considered as an “execution” body, an entity whose primary objective was to execute project optimally. But the PMO can be much more than that. Because of its unique position inside companies, the PMO can be a strategic business partner that enables companies to pilot their strategy,and when circumstances require it,pivot their business. Join us to find out more about how the PMO can position themselves as a true strategic business partner, and why that matters for the future.

Strategic Planning is crucial to the success of any organization, but when your finished plan collects dust for months afterwards, we know this was never part of your strategy. This session addresses why strategic plans fail and suggests ways we can avoid having our own plans end up in the trash. There are seven specific reasons companies lose focus on their Strategic Plan.This session will help you pinpoint the exact reason (or reasons) your company is stuck, and start bridging the gap from where you are right now, to where you want to be. This interactive and hands-on session will address 4 key questions:• Why do strategic plans fail?• Where does your organization/department sit in the strategy execution success grid?• What are the things we can do to fix the problem?• What are the action items that we can do now to fix our own problems?

In the future of how we’ll work, live, play, and give, 15 forces will create dramatic headwind, tailwind, or turbulence in our lives and careers. Learning their relevance is no longer optional; it’s a necessity. For most people learning is linear – they learn then they apply. We believe when it comes to relationships, a different lens is needed. Time and again, people enter our lives that dramatically alter both the direction and destination of our lives. Enablers of this adaptive and accelerated non-linear growth are your Curve Benders.So, who are your Curve Benders and how do you find them? More importantly, how do you become one in the lives of others? And how can the Curve Bending mindset unlock the next level of enterprise value creation and profitable growth?Join PMO Summit and bestselling author, senior leadership advisor, executive educator and coach, David Nour, as he shares key insights from his 11th book, Curve Benders, at the intersection of the future of work, strategic relationships, and non-linear growth.

As change champions, we get pretty frustrated when progress comes is slow and clumsy. In our pursuit of a more efficient and joyful workplace, we run run into low leadership buy-in, limited impact, poor practices, and unfair criticism. Moreover, when teams and executives get impatient for the results we promised, many of us simply retort in frustration “well, you’re just doing it wrong” . But what if successful transformation comes, only after failing through several barriers? What if consistent processes can only be chosen after the noise of trying several things? What if clear priorities happen only after painful program failures? What if we can fix our culture only after some very awkward conversations? This energetic hands-on workshop will challenge the conventional wisdom around transforming to high performing teams and high-value delivery. Namely, you will learn How anti-patterns are the result of logical and reasonable choices, How they produce meaningful outcomes, AND How the next level of agility is just around the corner with simple steps. Come to this workshop ready to rock, and you will leave with a concrete action plan to overcome the barriers that hold you back from shaping transformational workplace improvements.

When you’ve proven to your organization that project management delivers value, helpingeveryone to accomplish more and stress less, invariably more people are interested in developing their project management skills too!This shift is a testament to your good work, but also can present a variety of problems and opportunities.If you’re running a PMO, do you have the time to teach everyone how to develop their skills from zero to proficient when they are not necessarily leading the most critical and visible projects?Likely you don’t have time for that, but the payoff can be enormous for both the organization and your reputation as the go-to internal project guru.In this interactive workshop, we’ll explore what typically happens after you’ve proven the value of project management, explore common challenges (and opportunities!) and present strategies for how to address them.This workshop will be led by Dawn Mahan and will include breakout sessions, so that you can not only learn from the facilitators, but also share your experiences and learn from each other.After this lively and interactive workshop, you will:Be prepared for how to respond to the delightful request that “everyone” needs more project management trainingBe able to clearly discuss the benefits and opportunities of developing project management skills in non-project managersHave a simple language and framework ready that is aligned to PMI’s global gold standard process, but in more non-project-management-geek-friendly termsLearn from the facilitators, each other and reflect on your organization to create a strategy for supporting the non-project manager that works for youFeel confident that you have trusted resources available when you are ready to expand your reach and results

This is a fun session with Tim Short, Senior Vice President of Global Operations for KeyedIn. Tim talks with Laura about their long histories in PMOs and project management and the evolution They’ve seen for PMOs and project management. Back in the 90s, They saw projects managed in a much more step-by-step approach.Today, organizations must embrace organizational agility and learn to shift quickly as the needs of our customers are shifting. This creates an opportunity to embrace both big “A” Agile and little “a” agile in ways that are helping organizations thrive.And this is where the PMO comes in…

A practical guide to exactly how a PMO can help with portfolio management. Explaining what a PMO can do and why they are best placed to offer this help.

There is never enough money to take on every project that comes along and most project selections are based on politics. However, William H. Volpe III, PMP spent 9 months several years ago creating a project selection tool based on PERT that can make this more of a logical process.

Based on survey and polling shows a trend toward buy-in make-or-buy decisions and more projects is performed under contract for an external, paying customer. We like to call this type of project a customer project.Project business management is the discipline of managing a customer project in a way to bring money home and make customers happy. Is also used to manage vendors on the customer side, from simple customer-contractor relations to complex project supply network (PSNs).This presentation will discuss how PMO generates value for Project business management.

Learn more about PMI's Brightline Initiative and its approach to successful transformation

Learn about the real difference-making skills that great PMO leaders all have in common. This year, especially, has been a challenging one for PMO leaders and has created some incredible opportunities for PMO leaders to step into new roles and finally earn their seat at the table. To fully embrace this opportunity, we’re going to arm you with some new ways of thinking about the role of PMO Leader, what you might need to let go of to be successful, and what your business leaders are looking for you and your PMO to do to help them make a big IMPACT – even in times like this global pandemic…actually, especially in times of this global pandemic.

During lock down many PMOs had to quickly adjust to continue to support their organisations from afar. This webinar is going to use insights from this time to understand the challenges PMOs are facing in the real world, identify new areas in which they can innovate, and create a road map of activities to strengthen their PMO and their people.

We all know legacy organizations were not built for speed. The need to become a Future Ready organization today, so one can leap ahead and stay competitive, is critical to success, especially given all the forces of change in these turbulent times. In his new book, the #1 Best Seller “Future Ready”, Nick explores how organizations can leverage this new framework to develop an aligned vision of their future ahead, quickly build new future focused customer value, develop the leaders of tomorrow, and shift mindsets to a culture of exponential thinking. For this talk or discussion, brings practical examples to life through the work he has done with over half of the Fortune 200.

Priya Patra talks about her experience during the COVID-19 lockdown from Mumbai.;She covers the Project Management Technology Quotient (PMTQ) and how it’s applied to navigate the new COVID-19 normal.

Every project is an investment. But unless the PMO is designed to elicit investment information at project initiation, and then to track expected ROI during execution, the project’s business value will likely be forgotten and frittered away. This presentation will provide attendees with the information and documentation to set up the project’s investment metrics, including the value/cost of time, at initiation, and provide ROI-based enhancements to earned value metrics for tracking and maximizing ROI.

The role of the Project Manager is transforming from tactical into a strategic as companies now recognize the PMO function as a critical component to business success. PMOs across the world are leading IT/Business teams to develop new and enhanced products, services, and associated processes that increase the customer experience, improve margins, and enhance shareholder wealth. Understanding, assessing, and calibrating IT talent is more critical today than ever before. Project Managers today are required to be more strategic as they and IT personnel actively engage with business units to leverage information and technology to improve competitive advantage. As a result, you need to quickly assess and develop critical skills that enable you to actively engage and collaborate as part of business teams in leveraging information and technology to improve competitive advantage.Strategic CIOs have identified The Talent Gap as one of the biggest challenges-. More specifically, CIOs are concerned that the lack of business competencies and associated skills prevent IT personnel from actively engaging in a collaborative process as part of business teams.This presentation provides:o The key competencies and skills Project Managers need to exhibit to more effectively collaborate as part of business teamso An assessment process and methodology Project Managers can use to identify the gaps and improve the competencies of IT personnel for the critical IT skills.o The tools, techniques, and methodologies Project Managers can use to attract, develop and retain, top IT PM’s in their organizationo Case studies that CIOs can learn from in identifying, assessing, and improving strategic competencies and skills of IT personnel.

Organizations that identify and address pervasive mindsets at the outset are four times more likely to succeed in organizational-change efforts than are companies that overlook this stage. During this presentation, we will cover the key aspects to ensure that we as PMO’s lay the right foundation in achieving the goals of our organisations using a people-first approach.

Luis Duran talks about the PMO industry trends in the coming years and how we, as PMO leaders can influence the way PMO s are perceived.

Lead Your PMO through the COVID-19 Crisis – and Beyond!;In this session, Barbara teaches you to start with your self – cope with the stress of change and role model resilience.;Then to support your team – inspire a growth versus fixed collective mindset and accelerate agile progress towards an even more change-capable culture. Finally, to emerge as more confident and competent – and less stressed and frustrated – leaders of change, individually and collectively.

All workplaces have politics - good and bad. People bring their personal emotions, needs, ambitions, cultural aspects and everything else in between. As Project Managers we need to be able to understand and navigate politics to deliver the required project outcomes. This session is a how to guide - practical steps to help you understand politics and deliver.

Despite heroic work by project teams, our organizational change efforts have an abysmal track record. After 20 years studying change while living it (he’s been change managed plenty), leading it at companies large and small (he’s failed at it) and studying it, Al Comeaux finally puts the onus where it belongs: On leaders like him.He explains why leaders make counterproductive moves (pushing change onto people, failing to listen first), which leave project teams with the head hurting job of trying to make change happen up against even tougher odds. And he explains what we can do about it.

Project Management can be interpreted as wasteful, unnecessary, and invaluable to organizations who find the concept alien. Its role and benefits often relegated to task scheduling and coordination. However, when fully grasped and implemented by a transformative leader, project management can be a powerful tool for driving organizational growth and building a competitive advantage. What happens when an organization fails to understand the benefits of project management or lacks the will to drive its implementation? In this podcast, Uloma Jacob explains how she led an organizational cultural shift to Project Management with a skeptical organization. The highlights of the discussion include:– Selling the benefit of Project Management– Embedding the culture of Project Management– Leading change from the inside out– Holding leadership engaged and accountable throughout the process ;Participants will learn practical tools for leading change and justifying their roles within their organizations

Workplace change is among the top life-stressors and it’s holding women back. Holding fewer positions of authority with little decision-making input means women are more prone to overwhelm and burnout (Quinn Smith, 2018). Technology change also impacts women more as they hold the majority of roles being automated (Tarr, 2018). Combined with the fact that women continue to battle with working more to prove themselves (Lishman, 2019), it’s no wonder that few women make it to the top. In this session, we explore positive ways to lead ourselves, and our teams, through change and uncertainty; even when we’re dealing with our own set of personal challenges.By understanding the psychology behind change we can apply simple techniques as project managers to gain clarity amidst uncertainty, apply calm practices to make better decisions in a crisis, and approach our leadership with compassion; encouraging connection and more meaningful conversations to drive productivity. Join us for this fun and interactive session.

Building support for change doesn’t have to be that hard! But many changes/projects fail simply because leaders don’t build and sustain sufficient support from beginning to end. Project managers need to act more like baristas who seamlessly blend milk and espresso into lattes where you can’t tell where the milk end and the coffee begins.During this session, I will show you how you can easily begin to blend support into your project plans. And I will show you the major places where leaders often miss opportunities to create those seamless blends.

The 10,000 hour rule is a situational example, and is a falsehood relative to learning. We either associate or sequence neural inputs from our senses with existing neural storage. We do so subconsciously based upon all conscious and subconscious inputs during our waking hours. During sleep, and other mindful periods, our brain categorizes the inputs. Same versus not-same. If new stimulae do not fit existing patterns, we associate irregularly or create new patterns. The current hypothesis is that new patterns are energetically taxing, so the brain will attempt to ‘fit’ the new with the existing – hence confirmation bias and cognitive dissonance. We can comfortably dismiss ‘sameness’ – without wasting precious bioenergy to do so. (Forget where you placed your keys or your glasses – same place as always…). Micromastery and other designed teaching learning tools (when customized to the individual and existing experience) can accelerate the growth and change process by opening new neural pathways at lower biological cost – and creating new perceptions.

Project managers are leaders. Good leaders motivate, inspire and create an environment that encourages people to want to show up and do their best every day. Perhaps you have experienced toxic environments that drive people by fear, consistently overwork people and punish them for taking risks or speaking the truth. Our top 10 tips will help you recognize what you can do (and what not to do!) to help create a healthy project culture, which will result in people who want to follow you to your next project and drive your own success as a leader.In this keynote-style presentation, you will first gain insights from the Project Management Institute (PMI) Pulse of the Profession Study. Then, we’ll count down our top ten practical tips that can be implemented immediately.

In this session we dive into why PMOs are in the perfect position to lead change within organizations. It is now the time for PMOs to become “Chief Transformation Officers” and support the digital transformation within their enterprise . Join us to discover why now is the time to evolve your PMO, starting with a 3-step process.

Leaders in every industry struggle with driving successful strategy execution and change. These projects are complex, riddled with challenges, and consume vast amounts of energy. Despite innovative practices in leadership and management, these projects continue to perform poorly, and many fail.In this talk Steve shares his strategy execution leadership trifecta – fortifying your personal leadership, galvanizing your leadership team and enrolling employees for significant buy-in. Steve weaves in his history and case studies of leading change. The results? You’ll learn how to accelerate change to fuel the growth of your firm and to propel your personal leadership success.

This session focuses on key organizational change “moments that matter” for project professionals to drive change and improve their project outcomes.Facilitated by a change management strategist and thought leader with proven business experience, CCMP™ and Prosci ADKAR change certifications and an engaging learning style, the session will look at organizational change through the lens of a project professional. Participants will understand the value and benefit of organizational change to their project role as well as how they can action practical change strategies that will enhance their projects and grow their skills.

READY, Set, Change! provides a framework which compliments traditional organizational change initiatives with an intense focus on advanced preparation and integrated support. Discover a simpler and faster approach to help individuals and organizations adopt change, to ensure business objectives are met.

What would happen if every member of your project team came to work focused on finding solutions and creating better results?Based on groundbreaking new research in innovation and problem-solving, you’ll learn what leaders like you are doing to build more creative and solutions-oriented project teams.You’ll explore the root causes of FOSU (fear of speaking up) and techniques to turn your project team’s fears and frustration into innovation.You’ll learn techniques to navigate the elegant dance between clarity and curiosity and practical tools to help your team discover micro-innovations and share best practices.

Author John C. Maxwell has a famous quote, “A leader is great not because of his or her power, but because of his or her ability to empower others.” During this session we will explore the benefits of Empowering People and review examples of organizations who are successfully empowering their people. We will also review small steps that you can take within your organization to begin the culture transformation necessary to Empower People to Deliver Results!

We are better leaders and team members when our well-being is secure. Navigating uncertainty and adversity has created a strain. Higher resiliency can help us bounce back from adversity and use it as an opportunity to stay focused and move forward. Come learn and connect with others as Patricia Bravo hosts an interactive session to share the 6 Key Areas of Resilience and was to design and strengthen your own resilience plan.

This session provides insights into a powerful dynamic of three communication traits that come together to create the sweet spot for a leader to build high levels of trust and respect with the people and teams he or she leads. This model is a leadership communication style of the most successful coaches in both collegiate and professional sports and is a model that PMO leaders should adopt without adapting to lead and build high-performance teams with team members who will want to follow. Participants will have an opportunity to do a simple self-assessment to grade themselves against the ideal while also learning four components of the right mindset that makes this power communication approach to work its magic.

What if I told you harmony and relationship building with your project team members may warrant increased project success? It is time to abandon the typical team/vendor introductions, dreaded “fun fact” kick-off questions, and go deeper in learning your team members’ productive quality traits.Join Marquise Vilsaint to learn about Harmonious Project Management and deploy one approach today that will change the relationship dynamic of your project teams in a positive and productive way.

Our new normal includes a painful intensification of our awareness of social injustices, even as we all cope with the stress of decreased social contact. As leaders, what does the burnout research indicate we must be aware of, and how can we use this information to increase productivity and resilience in ourselves and our organizations?

In this interview, Susanne discusses the importance of emotional intelligence when leading yourself and others through uncertain times. In fact, it is when times are the most volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous that leaders are needed the most. This is when the best leaders step forward and add value. In the interview, Susanne shares practical tips and actions you can take to become a more impactful and emotionally intelligent leader.

One of the greatest misconceptions in project management is that the project manager “owns” the project. However, what does the project manager own? The resources? The budget? The scope? The reality is that the project manager does not own these decisions, rather the project manager influences the decisions. John Maxwell says, “Leadership is influence, nothing more, nothing less.” Rick Morris will explore how to influence key areas of a project ethically and responsibly. How do you influence dates? How do you get the resources you deserve? How do you handle the typical conflict that dooms projects before they even start? How do you deal with methodology changes? How can you influence waterfall requests in an Agile world? Rick will review time tested techniques and reveal the art of ethical influence in a keynote presentation that you do not want to miss!

Imagine bringing two opposite cultures, traditions and worlds together. Imagine a white, middle aged lawyer and PMP becoming an elder in an ancient African tribe. Imagine a conservative Maasai warrior bonding with a Canadian “brother” and starting a business together. Imagine pushing past the impossible with the power of respect, honor, curiosity and compassion.Paul will show you how to use what he discovered to inspire your own lives and projects. You’ll leave with new insights and tools to enrich, and empower you as PM/BA leaders.

Pretty much everything in our PMO-PPPM World evolves around our human need to control; practices, methods, tools and techniques encourage practitioners to exert control over processes and people.This interview revolves around some basic principles based on our intrinsic human nature, the original nature, which allows us to be at a state of flow, present and hence serving others better, which also allows us to be agile for example, understanding that planning is the best practice to get lucky, understanding that no plan has ever been executed to “perfection” as no one is able to see the future, at least not yet.

Emotional Intelligence is an area of reflection and skill development that is vital for PMs, Leaders and for PMOs. Our ability to influence and to shape the practice of project management in our organizations is conditioned not just by techniques, practice guidelines and compliance management, but by the interactions we have with people we deal with. An emotionally intelligent PMO is much more effective than one which only focuses on its formal technical mandate.In this session, Dev Ramcharan, an EI in PM specialist, will walk you through an introduction to EI for PMOs.

How can organizations embrace change both effectively and productively?The answer is to unleash the capabilities of your staff members.Donna will highlight how using the conventional tools of adaptive resource management, program management and portfolio management can literally transform any business.What’s the secret? Moving away from heavy process and embracing bi-directional communication, delegated decision making, laser focus, and a commitment to results.

Recently, Gartner claimed that 80% of today’s Project Management tasks will be eliminated by 2030 as Artificial Intelligence takes over. Will 80% of today’s PMO tasks will most likely also disappear too? On the other hand, the Project Economy claims that the future of work is about projects. How will this impact the future of PMOs? This session, founded upon some of the latest research and practical examples, will explore how PMOs can adapt to the new reality and move towards a more strategic role to survive.

In this session, you will learn how PMOs play a vital role in tying strategy to business value realization. As we transition to the “new normal” of a pandemic, companies are shifting focus from cost optimization to value optimization. Digitization is core for survival and continuous change is a norm. With these conditions, PMOs need to understand the business strategy and supporting roadmap of key projects, products or services that are critical to delivering business outcomes. Delivering strategic roadmap at scale, with shortened time to market while enabling organizational change adaptability, is key to realizing the project benefits

Hear the lessons learned of a PMO transitioning to an SRO. Join Jennie to hear about what went well and what opportunities were faced during the past year. This will be a great session for any PMO to get tips on how to mature your PMO! Jennie can also touch on the pandemic leadership of the overall portfolio.

Good PMs deliver to time and budget, GREAT PMs understand that when provided a project they are to maximise the business position. Squeezing every last drip of commercial and economic position out of the plan. To often they are too focused on process and not the practise of being a great PM.

We are no longer in the Information Age. We are now in the Attention Scarcity Age—where rapid change and information overload is the norm.Having a successful IT strategy, and being able to successfully execute the right projects have never been more critical to organizational success, yet harder to achieve.In this presentation, you will learn my Strategic Simplicity® Framework, and how its principles lead to IT Strategy and PMO success that are aligned to the needs and values of the organization.

Based on experience assessing a client’s organizational delivery maturity, this presentation will take attendees through an assessment of key capabilities that are required in every organization to accelerate business results.The Business Results Accelerator Maturity Model is based on 12 capabilities across Strategy, Leadership and Execution.Using tangible questions and examples, Annmarie will guide attendees through an assessment of their organizational maturity to identify gaps and opportunities to accelerate their results.Based on experience, Annmarie will share the challenges faced by organizations today in a world where competing priorities and an overwhelming amount of work is the norm. By assessing the maturity of the organization across these core capabilities, an organization can focus on developing key capabilities to eliminate churn, optimize their team’s efforts, improve team collaboration and engagement and ultimately, accelerate their results.Annmarie will share case study examples of organizations that have completed this assessment and implemented an Acceleration Plan to enable their teams to develop project management, leadership and strategic planning capabilities.

There are two keys to effective portfolio planning. First, make sure you have the right portfolio selected. Second – and it’s only after you’ve selected the right portfolio – make sure you manage those projects right. If you don’t have that first ingredient in place, you’re fighting an uphill battle. This session explains how the process works.

In this session, Lee Lambert discusses the critical relationship between organization strategy and project execution, why being a good project manager will not be enough, and how to align your projects to the organization’s strategy.

As businesses struggle to recover from the impact of COVID-19 the need to build a resilient, adaptable organization has never been more critical. From strategic focus to effective delivery, organizations must be built around the ability to pivot instantly and with minimal disruption - and that only happens when the business is built that way.

We as leaders are under constant pressure to apply our expert knowledge on how to improve organizational performance. The often-urgent need to deliver target business or mission results, coupled with the assumption that most people will generally resist change and must be “won over” in order to gain their buy-in, drives much of the common “best practices” for organizational change management.This presentation will challenge such commonly held assumptions, and offer five key “missing ingredients” that can be applied once we embrace a different mindset. The presenters will offer real-world examples and stories of “humble learning” from their own failed attempts, while also sharing some breakthrough successes.

Strategic planning is now a part of the PMI’s Talent Triangle - now identified as a critical component to our current and future roles. However, reading and hearing is one thing but how many of us are in a position to practice strategic planning and execution? ALL OF US. This session will show us how strategic planning is a key to our success at work but, as well, to our careers and our lives. We will learn how to create a solid plan for any of the three legs and we will leave with the start to our own Professional Strategic Plans.

Are you wondering how to keep your mind, body and PMO healthy during this time of constant change? This session will leave you with activities that you can use right away to do just that. Plan to have some fun while discussing this important topic.

Amidst the pandemic, there are worldwide movements happening that demand NOW is the time for change – from Black Lives Matter to flexible and remote working revolution. During this time we have seen our personal values and societal values (and where they are lacking) be heightened more than ever – and many have realised the disparities with greater inequalities such as those impacting gender and race evident. We have also seen opportunities in the pandemic for doing things a different way such as remote working revolution and benefits to our environment.We have seen the world and our world can change almost instantaneously when it has to – so NOW we can choose to bravely build back better. Reverting back to business as usual in the way we have always done it is to fail our projects and organisations. Instead, we get fierce and bravely build back better – NOW is the time for action that puts our people, humanity, and sustainability at the heart of projects and organisations.

Living through an immersive change experience such as a global pandemic provides us with may reminders and lessons about leading change, and the only thing we know for certain is that the future is going to give us plenty of opportunities to use those learnings. Focusing on how we all experience change, this session consolidates what we know and what this means leaders need to do to move their teams from the panic state that comes as changes are announced back to being productive in an environment which is full of unknowns and where changes are being continually introduced.It’s packed full of practical ideas and insights from projects that you can take action on right away and which will help PMO professionals not only lead their teams but support the project and programme leaders around them.

COVID changed everything. Every organisation’s strategy as was is un-matched to now, unmatched to tomorrow This is the BIGGEST opportunity for the organisation and the PMO in a life-time! Why? How do we respond?, What are the steps, techniques, targets?Join me to find out. We’ll do the full breadth – but because of the time not much depth. & anyway – Depth would be irrelevant or wrong as you’ll have to apply what we discuss to the personality and circumstances of your organisation That is why he focus is where to start, what to discuss and how to progress.

Project managers and their teams agree that communication and connecting stakeholders to the goals of a project are core to the role of project managers. Connection is a fundamental part of both aspects of our role. Connection is built on social intelligence – the way that we build and maintain relationships with others and elicit co-operation.And it is hard to engage social intelligence when we are stressed and anxious. Creating space for ourselves, knowing ourselves and taking deliberate steps to build up our toolbox of practices to help others is critical in these times of unpredictability. This session explores social intelligence in project managers and provides tools for building social intelligence from the moment the session starts. Research shows spotting and leveraging character strengths is a fast, effective way to enhance appreciation of our colleagues’ motivation and purpose. And that appreciation builds social intelligence. The good news is that character strengths spotting is easy and fun and can be learned in as little time as it takes to attend a workshop. In this interactive transformative workshop, you will learn how to recognize, acknowledge and cultivate character strengths. You will be able to apply character strengths to your communication and develop specific actions that elevate your role as a connector and enhance the experience for your teams. The importance of Social Intelligence for Project Managers• The challenges and opportunities of Social intelligence. Using Character strengths to develop Social Intelligenceo Character strengths in you o Seeing strengths in otherso Leadership and Communication leveraging strengths;Take the free VIA Character Strengths Survey here to get your personalized strengths ranking here: http://LBSummit2020.pro.viasurvey.org

There are many elements to success in leadership. This is no different for PMO leaders. They must look inwards, outwards and explore other areas to find resources to help them on their journey. Join this interview to view PMO leadership both philosophically and practically so that you can discover a better version of you by conquering your inner fears and outer challenges.

There’s no question that leadership today means facing a unique set of challenges. Leaders must find a way to empower, motivate dispersed employees, and facilitate cross-functional collaboration while operating in an environment like never before. With remote work as the new norm for so many, effective leadership is critical. Many teams are scrambling to find solutions to improve productivity, collaboration, and speed, from anywhere. In this session, Amir Younes, VP of Client Success at Wrike, will share which skills and principles are essential for leading during a time of crisis and actionable tips on how to use technology to automate processes and easily manage your work so you can focus your time on empowering remote employees.

Your PMO is adding value by leading projects and delivering results. Your PMO is also adding value by leading project managers and building their skills. While our organizations are going through this period of uncertainty and change, it is even more important that you lead and support your project managers well. Their work environment has changed, whether they are working from home or returning to the office. Project priorities and desired outcomes will continue to shift, and project teams may be re-forming. Stakeholders, sponsors, and team members are facing their own challenges and may be less responsive to your timelines. Your project managers -who are skilled at managing risk and uncertainty- will need to use their skills to build flexible project plans, motivate their teams, communicate with increasingly remote teams, and lead without authority. They will need to be comfortable with uncertainty.You need to lead your project managers with increased clarity, enhanced communication, and empathy. You need to take advantage of opportunities you can find to improve their skills. You need to balance the drive for results with an understanding of the challenges they’re facing and remember that we’re still dealing with a crisis.In this session, we will look at how you can provide the leadership your project managers need right now. You will leave with techniques to support your project managers as they strive to drive change, deliver results, and add value to the organization.

Focus on how having an adaptable PMO that enables business agility can be a critical success factor during times of change and crisis, e.g. COVID and business continuity.

How to build a PMO in an organization that is not used to utilizing PMs in their projects.

With the new concept of project economy, the main actors that are PMOs and project managers are the craftsmen who will bring the positive impact of project management to the various markets. Each project manager has to think about how to readjust strategies in order to stay competitive and aligned with the customer’s need.

Hear Beth May’s personal journey combined with the journey of the Project Management for Change organization. Her personal journey was about leaving her job after 28 years, so that she could have more impact (professionally and socially). Initially, she didn’t do much project management for her “day job” so she joined PM4Change so that she could do project management as her “hobby” and so that she could have the opportunity to have the social impact that she yearned for.

Andrea Cirelli talks about how she is able to evolve as a PMO leader, the evolution of her work and her teams, and how she's preparing to evolve yet again.

During the last PMO Impact Summit, Mike Hannan and I showed how you can reach much more output with less effort. But this requires a mind- and organizational change.Most managers assume that this is a huge effort and takes a lot of time.;The Coronavirus crisis forced us to rethink nearly every assumption – one of them was “as a consultant you have to be face to face with your customer to do such a change!” And suddenly everything has to be done “online”. And it worked – even better.In this presentation, I show how this worked – what changed and what kind of tools and workshops we used. p.s.: it is linked with the presentation of Mike this year – we share the same underlying belief that “people are good!” so you can see my presentation as one possible practical example of what Mike presents in a more general way.

Does your organization have a career path for project managers? It is a PM leader’s imperative if you want to attract and retain talent. This presentation covers a simple, yet successful approach to establishing a defined professional growth path that highlights an individual’s evolving experiences, the challenges of added responsibilities and the transition from practitioner to thought leader.

Networking has unlimited potential, but only for those willing to take risks and work outside comfort zones to explore new possibilities. Learn more about attracting audiences to your LinkedIn profile with proven strategies for leadership success. Explore the Top 10 LinkedIn profile “must-haves”, create meaningful connections, and ways to build and sustain mutually beneficial relationships.Interested in knowing more about innovative ways to leverage LinkedIn to extend your brand awareness? Don’t miss this interview with networking SHERPA, Kari Mirabal.

Over the past few years, I’ve heard so many different opinions, been through countless constructive debates and read so many different articles about what people think of professional development and certifications.We live in a rapidly evolving world where new information, methodologies, frameworks, ideas are spreading like fire in a wild bush so professional development is becoming more of a necessity than an option so we have to be agile (Inspect and Adapt). It will help individuals grow on professional and personal levels; and will help them give back to the profession, organizations and help others grow as well.The PM World Journal recently published an article of mine about the same topic: https://pmworldjournal.com/article/the-added-value-of-professional-development

How do you ensure your project team members who work virtually are moving the project forward. I will share effective human resources, schedule management, process improvement, and technology tools to manage your project workflow and outcomes with a Resource Management perspective.

With today’s state of affairs with the increasing trend of remote work, project managers who enjoyed the benefits of being in the office are now in a situation to maintain their authority and keep connected in this new normal of virtual project management.;While virtual project management is not new, the expectations and the norms of today require tapping into key skills and building great habits to ensure that the virtual project managers of the future are seen and heard, and working diligently to make a clear connection with all stakeholders. From this session participants will 1.List the 5 great habits to lead in a virtual world2. Identify a key tip for each habit to implement3. Develop an action plan to implement a habit and tip into future projects

Are you a successful professional women who works way more than she plays, worries more than she risks, and regrets more than she celebrates? Maybe it is time to jump off the Bigger-Better-More bandwagon and breathe into an intimate, intense, slow, steady, method for overcoming overwhelm. Join Tami to learn about The Seven Circle Method, and implement some techniques today, that will set you on a course toward reaching your most outstanding existence.

This is a riveting episode with Scott Payne, President of PM Master Prep, Scott and Laura will keep you entertained as they dive deep into how the best organizations design their training programs for maximum impact. Scott will explain how the best organizations abandon the traditional off-the-shelf training approach and follow a more agile, engaged approach. What you learn here will help you create a more focused, impactful, and sustainable project management team. This is a can’t miss episode!

How do you earn your seat at the table in your organization? Whether you are running PMOs, programs, or projects, it is critical that you tie the work you do to the IMPACT you and your team are having in the organization. In this session, Lauren Pawell, a business and marketing guru, shares the ways you can get and keep your seat at the table by learning how to speak your business leaders’ language, prioritizing how you spend your time, solving business problems, marketing yourself and your team along the way, and reinforcing (reminding them of) your value in a non-salesy way.

The PMO leader/project manager sets the tone for meetings and each should be treated as a production. As an example, take three back to back 30 minute project meetings with mutually exclusive topics. team members in a program. Each needed to be treated as a separate production and as the director, there was a need to ensure preparation for each individually. Mental capacities were stretched after completion, but in the end, success was achieved by keeping the topics uniquely identified from the other!

This interview will work through key questions around how PMOs fit into agile organizations, the value that PMOs offer to agile, the challenges that PMOs face, and how PMOs must evolve for the new normal.

Agile transformations are supposed to make organizations modern, competitive, and relevant. But in the well-intentioned effort to move into the future, change leaders find themselves frustrated by push back, limited impact, poor practices, and unfair criticism. What is going on?This breakthrough presentation cuts through the “quick fix” hype of agile theory and explains a recurring transformational pattern that unpacks what holds organizations back: The BOOST is the initial gains from logical first steps; the BARRIER is the unavoidable roadblock that must come next; the ReBOUND is the way forward to further gains by leaning against the concept of the original boost. With these counter-intuitive rebounds in mind, this energetic talk explores three leadership moves that can be used to unblock stalled agile transformations. No, your transformation is not a failure. It turns out the buy- in, the talent, the alignment, and the growth you need to break through are already in front of you; it’s all simply hidden under the surface. Undiscovered. Un-utilized. Untapped.

Are you frustrated that your organization isn't listening to all the benefits that an Agile approach could offer? Or, on the other end of the scale, are you frustrated at Agilists who refuse to do any kind of planning of paperwork and put your organization (and their jobs) at risk? No matter where you fall on that spectrum, help is on the way. Actually, it is already here. The problem is that most Agile at Scale solutions still don't really scale, and the only one that does (the Scaled Agile Framework) appears to be impossibly complex. That's because it has been promoted by people who don't really get it and are just trying to sell some training and consulting.In this session, based on lessons learned with some very culture-bound organizations, Dr. Brown will show you how a "traditional" organization can safely adopt Agile, and how Agile can prosper in an organization that is reluctant to embrace change.

There are a lot of terms floating around these days that all seem to mean something similar. Angela Bunner, VP Customer Experience at Clarizen, helps clarify these terms and put them in context for the PMO.

Leadership is a team sport and every great team has a great coach behind them. Leading is more than delegating tasks and performance management. This session will walk you through some basic coaching skills every leader should have.

Many of us are using agile ways of working. But I still observe several agile myths. In this webinar I will give a list of agile myths and I will bust a few. Is the first product increment an MVP? I will explain the difference between an MVP and a MMP to bust this myth. Scrum is agile, but is agile scrum? I will elaborate on my Bird’s eye view in the agile forest with already more than 70 agile ways of working. Are incremental and iterative synonyms? I will draw a matrix for iterative and incremental and show what delivery methods will fit in each quadrant to bust this myth. Will an agile approach deliver the same results as a waterfall approach? By comparing an agile way of working and a waterfall approach I look at the final product and dive into the number of delivered features to bust this myth too.

In our VUCA world, there is increasing pressure for leaders and organizations to respond with business agility and resilience. Whether you are a PMO director, a portfolio, program, or project manager there are ways that you can be a leader in this transformation. Our combined experience and recent journeys have made us a part of co-creating what an Agile transformation looks like. For twenty years there have been gaps in the common Agile frameworks and approaches that have caused them to fail from day one. These organizations end up “doing” Agile and going through the motions, not “being” Agile and getting the results. Sevawise is committed to utilizing our experience in successfully empowering PMO leaders and members to become a critical part of a successful Agile transformation. We describe what successful leadership looks like and how to reposition your PMO for success. We discuss why some PMOs, portfolio, program, and project managers do not make a successful transition with Agile transformations or into Agile roles and what makes the difference.Utilizing the combined experience of Sevawise consultants, I provide a case study which is a composite of experiences we have had in multiple organizations.

For the PMO Leader that has developed a set of skills and best practices through years of experience in a traditional PMO environment, the thought of re-learning and challenging that knowledge from the Agile perspective can be daunting.This presentation will look at the Agile Transformation and how we combine our tried and true PMO skills to bring the most benefit to the organization. The presentation will be focused on the executive level expectations of becoming an “Agile Organization”.

Leaders inspire confidence and hope. In this unprecedented time, we are looking for those leaders more than ever. You don’t have to have a title or even the authority from someone else to step up and lead, right now, from wherever you are. All you need is the skillset.During this interview, Laura and I will talk about the 7 Keys to Leadership Presence for Women and breakdown the steps you can take to master them and apply them in the work you are doing right now.

The construction workforce is evolving in many positive ways, especially as it actively embraces diversity and technology. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most male-dominated industries in the world. Out of the over 10 million construction workers in the US, just over one million are female. Even more unbalanced is when you look at the percentage of females in the construction trades; 3.4%. In the trades, there is approximately one woman to every 20 men.So, why the lack of women in construction?

Top 3 ways women are built to lead in the project management industry and foster global growth.

Finding the right balance between using standards and best practices and making company specific adaptations is the key to facilitating the implementation of a PMO and the services it provides. The key word is tailoring: Tailoring the PMO services to your company, the industry in which it operates, and the culture and values of the people working there. By taking a proactive approach, deliberately/consciously tailoring important aspects of the PMO services and the processes associated with the PMO work, you significantly speed up and improve the implementation of important methods thereby increasing the likelihood of creating a real impact on the business.

This presentation provides three foundational building blocks for Business Driven PMO Setup and Management that PMO professionals need to master in order to understand and work with their leadership teams.They are:(1) the purpose of the PMO(2) the purpose of project management(3) where PMOs can fit within the organizationThough these building blocks may seem self-evident or even simplistic, research which will be shared shows that in practice most project management and PMO professionals fail to understand and apply these foundational basics resulting in a PMO mindset that is limited in value and narrow in application.This presentation will also correct the misguided and outdated notion of projects as change the business and operations as run the business with an organizational-wide (CHANGE the business, RUN the business, REACT to the business) view of where projects and PMOs exist throughout the enterprise.And lastly, this presentation will wrap up with a call to action for PMO practitioners in the form of key knowledge to acquire, skills to masters, and PMO career opportunities to seize.

Customers are the foundation of every business. In today’s economic reality, it’s more important than ever to keep the customers you’ve worked so hard to earn.In this presentation, Ali Cudby will give you the three keys to unlock customer retention. No matter what you sell, you’ll walk away with action steps you can apply to your business immediately.

The new PMO Generation is all about adding value and the key challenge for PMOs is how to define, measure, and present the value they add.Amireh will discuss the definition of PMO ROI and how PMOs should define, measure, and present it to the business.

Past President; CEO of the Project Management Institute (PMI), to share his unique perspective in a discussion on the future of the PMO – and how PMO and project leaders can ensure their ongoing relevance in a VUCA world marked by continuous transformation.

Is your PMO a crutch to compensate for poor accountability management in your organization? Have you heard “oh make it a project, that way it’ll get done” ? Do you function mainly as a cat herder rather than add business value ? These are some of the issues we’ll tackle from the exec leadership perspective.

Americo Pinto will present an innovative and practical model that will allow you to ensure that the mix of functions of your PMO is aligned with the expectations of your stakeholders, an essential factor for the value of the PMO to be truly recognized by the organization and stakeholders.

Laura Barnard, Founder of PMO Strategies, the PMO IMPACT Summit, and the PMO Strategies Podcast, will walk you through her signature step-by-step system for getting your PMO set up right from the start. She’s sharing the exact same system she used inside organizations as a PMO leader and what her students and clients have been successfully using for 7 years to build and run PMOs that are invaluable strategic business partners to their organizations.What’s been incredibly telling is what the COVID-19 pandemic has done to organizations and PMOs, specifically, around the world. Yet, despite this being a year of crisis, Laura’s students in this program have THRIVED amidst the chaos, earning and keeping their seat at the table in the most troubling times for many organizations. The best part? These students don’t have to “sell” the value of the PMO because their business leaders are begging for their help.If you’re building or running a PMO, this series will help you explore what will work best for YOUR specific PMO, how to get and keep your stakeholders and business leaders support right from the start, and ensure that you and your PMO have that seat at the table in helping your organization deliver on strategy.

After a 38 year career at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Roy shares his leadership lessons learned and the critical nature of effective risk management as we explore the universe.

Amy McKenna has built and run PMOs from contract start-up through IMPACT delivery in organizations of varying sizes. She’ll share her lessons learned that she had to apply when she transitioned from a large organization to a small business, how she motivated her team to develop a customer service mindset and what key leadership attributes Amy lives by.

Experiences and lessons learned in the various stages of PMO evolution, from creation to achieving stability to driving the acceleration of value. Carolyn will speak about ways to engage your stakeholders and proven techniques to energize teams.

Hear the story of how the Ella’s Kitchen PMO went from non-existence to PMO of the Year in just two years. This session shows how any organization can create its own unique PMO, regardless of PM maturity level. In fact, much of what this PMO has done is deliberately immature and that’s been fundamental to its success. Learn how their ‘pea-themed’ strategy caught the imagination of their colleagues and helped them build trusting, collaborative relationships with their project teams, and find out how you can take some of these tricks home to your own PMO.

Having a consistent and disciplined PMO infrastructure can make the difference between success and failure if it is deployed effectively. Identifying and developing project management methodology, best practices and standards for the PMO requires the appropriate level of guidance based on the specifics of the organization. Too much oversight or rigor can constrain progress and add non-valuable time and overhead to the effort. Conversely, not enough discipline can cause a lack of control and may defeat the purpose of having the PMO. Leading an enterprise-level PMO that aligns to the strategic vision is the key to deploying an effective program management infrastructure.

Ali Qureshi is no stranger to leveraging the power of project management to make an IMPACT for federal and state governments. Ali shares C-Suite perspective on how the right level of governance has helped his team deliver greater value and how he balances taking care of the team with looking toward the future.

André Kriger leads the IT organization from Telefonica Vivo, responsible for formulating their vision and execution of their respective strategies. Under his purview, IT is responsible for serving almost 100 million customers in Brazil. Within Vivo there are over 6500 personnel working at IT, both insourced and outsourced. André will share the CIO/customer perspective of the case study story that Michael Hannan discusses in the session called “Less is More.” Hint: The work André did to turn around the IT department for his organization landed him on the cover of CIO Magazine, Brazil as a first time CIO.

Joel Albizo shares how he’s used the power of project management to help him turn small organizations into incredible community IMPACT Drivers.

Michael has built multiple successful businesses leveraging the power of project management and worked with executives around the world as the sought better ways to drive higher ROI for their organizations. Michael shares this executive perspective during an interview with Laura and explains why he believes there’s so much more to project management than the title would suggest if you want to drive high-IMPACT in your organization.

You may have heard the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast,” but do you understand the long-term impact that company culture can have on organizational growth and revenue? The differences between intentional, effective company culture and accidental, ineffective company culture can make or break a team’s success, as Bharat Nain first learned when he led his high-school robotics team to a world championship victory against 3,000 other teams. As a lead software engineer, Bharat now works with diverse teams to take strategic plans and transform them into tactical implementation. In this interview with Laura, he shares real-world lessons and strategies for how to leverage company culture to improve the hiring process, how a strong company culture can help companies survive tough times, and how to create employees-as-raving-fans by implementing a strong culture.

To get the results you want for your projects, you need to get attention. But many leaders don’t know how to get it and keep it to grow their influence and impact at their PMO. People often see attention as a transaction, something to trade, but it’s much more than that. Neen has identified that we pay attention at three different levels; personal, professional, and global, and she’s designed a powerful methodology that makes it easy to leverage all three. Neen’s Intentional Attention model helps PMO professionals be more deliberate about the choices we make and the actions we take to grow our influence and grow our team. Join speaker, author, and sassy little Aussie, Neen James, and discover what makes attention valuable and why paying attention in very specific ways drives profitability, productivity, and accountability as a PMO. You’ll learn: The three types of attention, Personal, Professional and Global and how to master each Strategies to design work and personal environments to accelerate optimal attention and focus to accelerate your results A framework to get you and your team aligned, focused and executing faster than ever

Rich shares a varied perspective of what it takes to provide quality education about project management to a variety of audiences, in particular, practicing PMs and aspiring professionals at the University level.

Jennie has evolved her EPMO to a Strategy Realization Office “SRO”. This 6-year journey includes gaining executive buy-in and migrating from Waterfall to Agile.

Conventional wisdom and common practice tell us that large-scale enterprise transformations require unusually courageous leadership, take lots of time (also top management attention), cost a bunch of money, and can only be accelerated by deploying an army of top-notch change agents, coaches, and consultants. This presentation will flip this on its head, showcasing two real-world examples of dramatic large-scale performance improvement achieved with minimalist approaches – based on TOC/CCPM, agile and self-organization concepts. The co-presenters then share two models for how any leader or manager with the right motivation can replicate and perhaps even amplify this “less-is-more” model of success.

It’s not often you get the chance to build project practices from virtually scratch. Even rarer when you can point to your work leading to a multi-hundred percent increase in projects shipped. In 2010 I was asked to create a program management office for a new division of Hitachi GST (The hard drive division of the company). Stepping into the chaos I quietly went about creating a program process based on the values and principles of agile and lean. This is my story.

The growth of digital continues to cause disruption as everyone and everything is accelerated, with higher performance expectations. As a result, businesses need to respond faster to changing market conditions and execute effectively — across the entire enterprise. So how are you keeping pace and helping to increase agile adoption? In this session, you’ll learn how to: Empower teams and support different workstyles across the enterprise to help them be more effective Reduce reporting silos and minimize duplicate work Gain access to previously hidden work progress in real-time for cross-portfolio reporting and senior management status updates We will demonstrate Clarizen Go, a simple-to-use task management solution that helps teams be more agile and we’ll also demonstrate how it connects seamlessly to Clarizen One to streamline cross-portfolio project planning, management, and reporting. Join us to discover how PMOs can get the best of both worlds – empower teams to work the way they work best while still being able to maintain the project oversight and visibility you rely on to deliver the business results your organization expects.

Energy Driven Agile is an agile coaching framework and agility health assessment that focuses first on a person’s thoughts and then how those thoughts lead to a person’s feelings. Lastly, discovering how a person’s feelings affect how he or she behaves is the foundation of Energy Driven Agile coaching. Understanding how these three core themes contribute to a person’s energy within an organization, which can either enhance or disrupt an agile transformation is essential to beginning the coaching process. The higher the energy level, the more collaborative, creative, and less judgmental the person/organization will be during the agile transformation so the goal is to lessen the draining energy within an agile transformation during both advantageous and trying times. By utilizing this framework individuals and organizations will be able to start or continue the transformation knowing which individuals or groups of individual’s attitudes are indifferent, resistant, focused on personal gain, willing to help, etc. This enables a firm launching pad for one on one and group coaching during the agile transformation process to assess and support, if desired, the modification of the organization’s level of energy.

Going Agile is more than just Scrum, I see Agile as a way to develop leadership anywhere in an enterprise no matter how big or small. When you focus on the people, the people who will be building out your product and understand their strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations you can help shift the mentality around leadership.

Many PMOs wonder “how to be agile” but there are many easy ways once you start to look from the correct perspective. PMO offer teams services that make their life easier, PMO are often the guardian of standards whose presence is needed for governance and regulatory purposes and whose use is within development groups. A PMO that offers a retrospective service is on the cross-roads of 1) being agile 2) providing agile teams a useful facilitation service 3) Improving the relevance and acceptability of standards and regulation and 4) improving its own capabilities – Win win win 🙂

It’s official. Agile ways of working are now a required element of any modern organization. In a world of exponential change and complexity, staying relevant means transforming your organization to be more collaborative, iterative, and innovative. Unfortunately, the path to high performance is paved with land mines. Over and over, agile champions see their intentions and efforts get crushed up by overwhelming barriers to progress. It turns out, these barriers are all knowable in advance. In this high-energy presentation, executive agile coach Jesse Fewell shares his meta-research into the most commonly cited reasons transformations fail to meet expectations. Come to this third installment in a multi-part series exploring challenges facing all Agile transformations. We will offer fresh insights to convert agile frustration into proper perspective, leaving you better equipped to guide the journey forward.

Do you ever have a dependency on someone in a different part of the organization (or externally) and yet they don’t have the same sense of urgency as you? Increasingly, PMO leaders and project managers are responsible for delivering initiatives with people who do not report to us while relying on stakeholders we don’t have authority over. Our ability to influence can make all the difference in getting commitment and achieving our objectives. In this session, Andy shares evidence-based insights on how to improve your ability to influence even when you don’t have authority.

Have you ever been in a situation where you would like to put in practice these amazing learnings you got from that project management training course you went to last month but no one else seems to follow? Are you getting annoyed by missing out on the beauty of project management? If you are the only one realizing the value of organizational project management but getting no support from your manager or peers, this session is for you. Marisa Silva, The Lucky PM, will share her practical hints and tips on how your PMO can become a trojan horse (a good one, I promise) and how to implement a project management culture by stealth. It’s time for some PMO ninja action!

Humans, by our physiological and social nature, are adverse to change within our environments. Our neural structures and habituated systems block change. Our social structures affect normative pressure toward ‘sameness’. We seek rational self-interest – the ability to survive. Yet Thriving requires higher-order, slow neural processes, and approaches to a problem or opportunity adoption. The slow response leads to innovation that affects successful social evolution. In a world of fast-paced technological and social change, our fast response neurological systems take charge and we have the tendency to follow rather than lead. Humans socially develop the processes and tools that assist us to accept and adopt change. PMI and other organizations have more recently in human history categorized the processes and labeled them as best practices, often without an understanding of the underlying human factors. The evolution of PMO’s introduce the social and organizational elements of change, and still projects can fail because the individual and cultural elements are omitted (typically due to lack of knowledge or understanding). During our time together, we will work together to aid attendees to grasp initial insights and acquire some resources that will aid them to better incorporate a mindset that recognizes the natural chaotic response to change, and to start an approach to better establish Thriving projects.

Change is inevitable (and necessary) but we do seem to be facing more than our fair share in the past few years – and leading in uncertain times can be challenging, whether due to political turmoil, unpredictable marketplaces or environmental factors. Your team and the teams you work with will look to you to lead them through the uncertainty, and this can really put your leadership skills to the test. Knowing where to focus your energies can really help you, your stakeholders (who are facing the same challenges) and your teams not just survive but deliver great results. So how do you know what to actually do?

“Why don’t THEY get with the program?…..If only THEY would just…..” Sound familiar? Overcoming resistance – the holy grail of project/change management. Yet, what do these laments have in common? The focus on THEM – other people! So often we start off with the best intentions, but it starts to feel like we’re pushing the string – doing something “to” or “against” or even “in spite of” THEM. But what can we control? Only ourselves! Join us for a highly engaging presentation replete with real-world examples drawn from the presenter’s 30 years of in-the-trenches experience, in which she learned to “turn the mirror back on herself” and recognize how SHE was the barrier in the way! And how by changing herself, THEY changed too. Or more accurately – we don’t need to CHANGE ourselves, any more than we can force change on others. Rather, we’ll practice together how by reframing resistance in THEM from enemy to ally, identifying our own blind spots, and ADAPTING our mindsets and behaviors we can learn to lead in a new way. We’ll walk away with actionable insights to engage for change and get results.

Generally speaking, there are two domains of organizational change and business agility projects; formal and informal. The formal domain of these projects consists of the projects that are undertaken by as a result of strategic planning. The informal domain of these projects consists of spontaneous supporting projects that are undertaken throughout the organization in response to the change. Naturally, PMOs must first address the formal domain of organizational change and business agility projects with careful adoption of industry standards, principles, and practices. But that’s not all they can do; they can next consider how best to address the informal domain of projects. Toward that aim, the PMO does not seek to own these informal projects or compel how they are to be managed. Rather, the PMO nudges. This presentation introduces Behavior Economics Nudge Theory and the emerging role and new opportunity Business Driven PMOs face.

A Seat At The Table is a 6-Part professionally recorded round table with 4 women in project management in various stages of their careers discussing their biggest challenges over their career and the great opportunities the PM industry offers. Think Jada Pinkett’s Red Table Talk Show on Facebook for Women in Project Management.

How do we navigate the really tough times? What do we tell ourselves, how do we adjust our rhythms and our work pace, in order to get it done? And how does that affect our ability to get it done in the future? What can we do instead, so we’ll be energized and ready for the next challenge? And the next?

The PMO has a vital role to play in supporting the transformation efforts of organizations around the world and yet far too many PMO Managers come up short when it comes to emotionally intelligent (EQ) leadership, leaving the PMO function open to continual question. In our constantly evolving delivery world only high EQ PMO leaders worth following can provide the motivation, inspiration, and support to elevate the PMO from ‘nice to have’ to ‘critical to have’.

Inclusive leadership requires resilience and agility. Each person shows up at work with a history of their experiences and inherited culture/trauma. And everyone makes assumptions and everyone has unconscious biases. We cannot always anticipate mistakes or misunderstandings in encounters at work and on teams. Even seemingly small moments/interactions can build up and/or have lasting impacts. It is what happens next that is consequential. Learn how to be more alert to the nuances of encounters at work and how to step in and help turn a potential disruption into a learning opportunity for the team.

Studies have shown that Emotional Intelligence is the strongest predictor of performance, explaining 58% of success in all types of jobs. Emotional Intelligence is the foundation for all critical skills and is an important factor that sets star performers apart from the rest of the pack. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence make more money, manage relationships more effectively, and report being happier and more satisfied with life. Communication between your emotional and your rational “brains” is the physical source of emotional intelligence. Through this session, we will show that when team members use EQ to work more cohesively together, they boost their organization’s productivity, efficiency, and morale. Here are 4 reasons why: Composure … Keep Calm and Carry On. People who understand their own emotions, and are aware of their triggers, are better able to self-soothe, or even excuse themselves from explosive situations. This is especially beneficial for professionals in high-stress industries like healthcare and hospitality. Social … Build stronger relationships. Emotional intelligence training provides practical tools that will prove useful even during the most trying social situations. You might have the most ingenious team in your field, but if they can’t click with your client base or your teammates, it’s never going to matter. Communication … Team members with higher EQ are better equipped to interpret in-person interactions and non-verbal communications. That’s an indispensable skill for people to interact with others as part of their daily work. Empathize … Improve the reputation of your company. Help team members better connect with each other, and better relate to customers/clients. High levels of empathy in your team can translate to success in so many aspects of the business – customer service, human resources, worker satisfaction, and more. This presentation will provide a basic introduction to Emotional intelligence. Participants will leave with practical ideas to begin improving their Emotional Intelligence and boost leadership competence.

While it may be the polite thing to do, apologizing—especially over-apologizing—can diminish our credibility. This conversation with Laura gets at the core of being overly apologetic and provides tips to avoid weakening your messaging and your professional reputation. During the session, participants will: 1. Review trends on why women apologize more than men 2. Discuss when an apology is appropriate 3. Consider the five ways to break the “sorry syndrome”

Empathy is not about being nice. Nor is it about agreement. This engaging session will help participants learn how leaders can harness the power of empathy by understanding others to gain a business advantage. You’ll learn about the hunger for empathy in the workplace and uncover why empathy tops the list as the most critical driver of interaction skills when it comes to job performance. Along the way, you’ll learn immediately applicable techniques and ways to practice tuning in. You’ll leave with access to 2 tools to accelerate and continue your momentum.

Motivating project managers is inherent in the job of a PMO leader and might be one of the more challenging aspects of the role. That’s because communicating to motivate human beings is complicated. In this session, Skip will explore fundamental concepts in including the source of all human motivation and will provide a specific formula for communicating that will motivate others to action but is not motivational at its core.

Leaders face unprecedented demands on their time and focus. Master the necessary knowledge and skills to consistently bring your best to the table and inspire Fierce Loyalty throughout your organization. DID YOU KNOW? How leaders lead determines whether an organization can create and inspire Fierce Loyalty.

Interview with Laura about how women in project management and PMO roles can act confidently to earn their seat at the table.

How do PMO people learn? Most courses teach us through presentation with a number of exercises; where at the end our memory skills are tested. Effective? For the training team; yes. But what if there was another way for the learner? Accountability is key to true learning power – so what if instead we utilized an approach that allowed learners to do some reflective practice, apply their critical thinking techniques, then were made accountable for delivering through project-based learning(PBL) and mentoring? Considering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, and the fact that we are humans first, PMO second; this presentation will provide an insight into how best to invest in training for our people, getting true Return on Investment for the organization, whilst developing key personal and Leadership skills. Making better PMO people.

• Do you wish you could find a way to get what is in your heart and your head to come out of your mouth in a clear concise way? • Do you wish you knew how to have a difficult conversation without being emotional? • Do you wish you had the confidence to stand up for yourself for once? Give yourself the gift of communication, and let this be the year you finally know what to say and how to say it! Please join Tami Evans for an interactive presentation to answer these needs and gain easy tools you can use immediately. We will laugh a lot, sweat a little and everyone will walk out feeling empowered personally and professionally. You will leave this presentation understanding: How to avoid the ladder of inference How to identify observable behaviors How to have a challenging conversation How to stop a rumor How to give feedback How to express dissatisfaction and request a solution

I believe that women’s voices remain unrepresented in organizations, events, Podcasts, webinars and the broader project management community. While things are slowly improving, there is still a way to go – perhaps a long way to go. In this discussion with Laura, I would like to discuss why it is important to celebrate women’s achievements and insight and the difference we can all make in improving the visibility of women in the profession.

The “Agile vs Waterfall” wars–and all such methodology debates–focus on the solution without first understanding the real problem and thus distract us from the more noble pursuit of a universal “north star” approach based on common sense and common purpose. This presentation will lay out what common objectives must be achieved by any sound methodology, and will then apply sound management-science thinking and decades of experience to propose what techniques are most effective at helping PMO Leaders achieve those common objectives.

Artificial intelligence, robotic process automation, big data and analytics, machine learning, internet of things — all of these tech trends (and more!) are not just accelerating exponentially, they are compounding upon each other in innovative, synergistic ways that very few of us can anticipate. How do you plot a career path or even a learning strategy in such a fast-moving and uncertain landscape; how do you prepare yourself for the unknown?

Business transformation is a high priority in today’s corporate landscape – a fact that the C-Suite is well aware of. But once executives have decided to implement some type of transformation, they often rush to de-prioritize it. Sometimes they even stop paying any attention at all to this critical organization change, delegating essential strategy projects to those with little to no relevant experience. Enter the project management office. PMOs are uniquely situated to orchestrate organizational change, all while building a landscape that is centered around collaboration and social interaction. In this webinar I will explore the three key areas that a PMO can focus on to drive successful business transformation: Ensuring that visions are aligned, from the C-Suite to those directly working on the project Leveraging large-scale collaboration within your organization Defining the leadership qualities, and the best practices necessary to run a successful next-generation PMO

The world in which we live and work is getting more and more unpredictable. Disruptive Changes are coming in all directions and our response levels are being stretched to their limits. Although VUCA was first used back in 1987, it was 2002 that the US military began referencing the term internally. Even more recently, it has become present in describing the working world and the continuous change taking place, as a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex & Ambiguous place. Rich will unpack VUCA and how it relates to the continuous disruptive change being navigated by organizations and the people who work in them. Rich will use elements of Lego® Serious Play® to make this a visual and tactile learning experience for all attendees.

The advancement of the Internet over the past two decades has taught us that we must run our organizations differently for our businesses to thrive, and perhaps even survive. This digital transformation is inevitable. To successfully move into the future, leaders need to strike a balance between organizational hierarchy and cross-functional coordination. While there still needs to be accountability for results, organizations need to be able to move faster to achieve these results. In this engaging talk, Steve shares his transformational leadership framework, and how it’s used to adjust your culture for success in the digital age – to create a digital organizational culture. Steve weaves in stories of his rich history leading several types of transformational change in the face of growing digital reliance. The results? You’ll learn how to accelerate change to fuel the growth of your firm in this new world and propel your personal leadership success.

Although the benefits of effective Project Control, Cost Control and Cost Management systems are well known too often most companies rely on a hotchpotch of legacy systems with manual re-entry of data in different systems with excel being relied upon to cut-and-paste integrated reports together. The default position is that companies work around enterprises systems which few understand and are trapped by worries over massive and potentially ill-fated change initiatives. In this webinar, DADA will talk about how to get the benefits of effective Cost Management of accurate job costing, integrated real-time cost & performance reporting, top-down Planning.

Exploring next-generation portfolio management – the portfolio driven organization. Understand how portfolio management will become the hub of strategic success.

The topic of PPM will be thoroughly examined and methods of realizing the potential value add illustrated. The PPM is the thread that holds project management and projects together.

Implementing a PPM solution is an investment that needs to solve business problems and provide savings to your organization – not just as soon as it’s implemented but over the life of the solution. So how do you choose the best solution to meet your specific needs and ensure that it can continue to support your organization as it evolves? We’ll highlight concrete examples of what to look for and how to engage with each vendor as you evaluate solutions.

A recent study by MIT/CapGemini identified Governance as a major obstacle to successfully execute Digital Transformation efforts that seek to leverage technology as a strategic asset. As a result, the significant increase in technology-driven project requests that focus to enhance customer value, improve operational processes, and re-engineer business models are at risk to negatively impact business success if you have an ineffective or immature project, process, and leadership excellence model. Tactical governance processes in these three areas need to be aligned with a mature strategic IT governance model that reduces enterprise risk, ensures total alignment in project selection/execution, and enables the business to accomplish its strategy, goals, and objectives. This presentation answer the following questions: How can a Project, Process, and Leadership Governance Model minimize business risk, successfully identify and align projects to business strategy, and enable business goals to be achieved? What are the dimensions to measure the maturity of a Governance model and how to self-assess your company’s IT Project, Process, and Leadership Governance Model using a best-in-class assessment tool? How can I self-assess my organization’s Strategic IT Governance Maturity for project, process, and leadership excellence and compare your results with all assessment respondents? How can I access workshop materials to use in my organization to develop/mature their strategic IT governance competency in project, process, and leadership excellence?

Projects that are aligned to strategy are 57% more likely to achieve their stated business goals. But despite this, PMI data suggests that 20% of projects are so badly aligned that they should be stopped tomorrow. In this webinar we will show you how to: Improve project success rates using strategic alignment Eliminate waste in your portfolio Gain stakeholder commitment Look like a PMO Superhero! Check out this quick preview session available to you BEFORE the summit starts!

John will share with us the key characteristics of Project Management 2.0 and explain why PM 2.0 has emerged in response to the deficiencies of traditional project management. The presentation will emphasize the project manager’s emerging role in strategic planning and project leadership and discuss how to achieve more meaningful information with KPIs, metrics, and dashboards. John will also share with us the current state of PM 2.0 adoption, provide recommendations on how to get started and explain how PM 2.0 can reduce project costs and ensure delivered business value.

Been there, done that! Lee has more than 50 years in project management, teaching more than 50,000 students in 23 countries.  Recognized as one of the pioneers in the creation and implementation of a PMO, Lee is going to share his insights with us on what it takes to build and run a PMO that will get it done for the business, or has Lee likes to say, “Get er done!”

PMO Leaders often rely on standard solutions to “fix” Project Management challenges within their organization. Usually, those fixes serve only as a stop-gap solution and don’t address the root cause. To build sustainable improvement you are going to have to fix your plumbing!

According to a study of PMO characteristics conducted by Dr. Brian Hobbs for PMI, the average life expectancy of a PMO just barely exceeds the time to implement it. For a PMO to continue to exist in an organization it must demonstrate value to the organization that is well beyond the cost of its implementation and ongoing operational costs. Programs are not simply a group of related projects, they are temporary organizations that lead transformational change and focus on the delivery of a vision that realizes and sustains added value to the organization (sustained benefits much greater than costs).

This presentation will focus on how to establish a Lean COE within existing PMOs. It will cover how to instill Lean culture, run formal Kaizen events, and communicate hard and soft cost savings to senior leadership. In particular, the content will address how to do these things in a Services environment where it is sometimes difficult to capture the impact of a project manager on an initiative.

What is the difference between organizational project management maturity and project management office (PMO) maturity? How can a PMO evolve and how can we measure its evolution? Should a PMO necessarily evolve from an operational level to a strategic level? Several models have been published to measure the organizational project management maturity, however little has been said about specific models to measure the maturity of a PMO. Americo Pinto will present an original model developed especially to assess the maturity of PMOs, grounded on academic research and in the practical work of experienced PMO leaders.

Even world-class project managers will not succeed unless they get their executives to act for project success. The trap of applying best-practice project management only to have the project fail because of executive inaction or counteraction can be avoided. This is a how-to presentation. It describes how project managers can get their executives to act, and it identifies executive actions most likely to contribute to project success. Project managers are empowered to extend their influence beyond the immediate project boundaries into the organization, not only to get their executives to act, but also to help implement the actions.

Stephen is going to share his thoughts on unlocking the common traits of high performing organizations and leaders to increase personal and professional effectiveness and efficiency.

Disrespect happens – from our sponsors, our coworkers, our bosses. No matter how we reinforce expectations for workplace respect, every PMO encounters those who become workplace nightmares. If ignored or handled badly, bad behavior can devastate a PMO, project, team or organization like a wildfire. If handled early and effectively, relationships and workplace culture will be enriched. This makes disrespect management critical – it takes skill to effectively avoid arguments, clarify misunderstandings, deal with disputes, and repair relationships. Simply put – disrespect requires intervention and direct conversations. The presentation provides leaders with tools for approaching and resolving disrespect issues before they become full-blown conflicts. Critical to disrespect management, participants will develop strategies for changing the context of conflicts from negative to positive, from disrespectful to appropriate. Participants will learn how to turn a disagreement into an opportunity to provoke learning and enrich relationships.

As leaders of projects and teams, we regularly face choices and decisions that have downstream consequences. Do you want to help your PMO team members make better choices when it comes to decisions on their projects? Do you want to be able to make better decisions in your personal or professional life? Or are you simply curious about how and why people make certain choices? In this highly interactive session, Andy Kaufman, PMP shares why the familiar pros-and-cons approach seems to make sense—but is profoundly flawed.

Most people think of risk as a descent into the depressing aspects of a project environment. Nothing could be further from the truth. Risk has the potential to motivate team members and generate a sense of community. Join Carl as he takes you on a journey through a small town and great stories to help you leverage Risk Management to motivate your teams.

The world is experiencing a boom in the coaching industry. Gone are the days that the term ‘coach’ was only heard on the sports field! Whilst coaching has in fact existed in business over the years its often been limited to niche areas such as Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching and Career Coaching. In project management and more specifically PMO we don’t often associate our role with coaching which is such an untapped opportunity. In this presentation we will explore the coaching in its simplest form. By understanding what coaching is ( and isn’t) we can delve deeper to recognise and appreciate where as PMO leaders we can really have an impact on not only ourselves but our project teams.

Inspired by Stephen Covey’s inspirational book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People®, we take a look at the role of the PMO Manager and share what makes a highly effective PMO Manager in the profession today. Touching on different aspects of a PMO Manager’s career, this session will give PMO practitioners at any level; inspiration, ideas and practical ways to forge ahead in their career.

This presentation takes inspiration from the career renaissance of Oscar-winning Hollywood actor Matthew McConaughey. The session outlines what PMO Leaders can take away from Matthew’s transformation and describes the key skills required to become and evolve as a successful PMO Leader.

The project management field out there is pretty crowded out there. Its no longer enough to be just really good at what you do. You have to be more. It’s no longer build it on time, on scope and budget. You have to add value over and above the normal requirements of project managers. So how do we add value? How do we stand out in the crowd? How do we get recognized in this very crowded field? Our speaker will get us thinking about what we can do to innovate our careers and get to the next level.

Effective business driven PMOs enable organisations to deliver LASTING change! PMO team members require a diverse skill set and mindset to facilitate these changes, and to THRIVE in the modern industry. This interview will help you MASTER the skills that business driven PMOs require. We will also discuss why PMOs offers fantastic career opportunities for WOMEN in the modern age.

Imagine for a moment what the world would be like if you change your mindset to view two important decisions of your life – a career you enjoy and finding a fulfilling romantic relationship – with a different perspective.

Welcome to Career Dating, a look at what career search and your love life have in common. Fall in love with your PMO career by finding ways to keep it fresh. Learn how awkward conversations, sweaty palms, and that nervous feeling in your stomach are just a few commonalities career search and your love life have in common.

Are you struggling to implement project or portfolio management practices in your organization? Do people seem to be avoiding things that aren’t much more than common sense … and perhaps it even feels as though they’re starting to avoid you, too? Are you starting to doubt whether the best practices you were trained on don’t really work? (Spoiler alert: the problem’s not the medicine. It’s the dosage and the treatment).

Are you working in a PMO? Are you in a position where things are not going well you need to shut it down? Is your program over and you need to shut down your PMO? Join Bill Dow as he walks you through the steps in successfully shutting down a PMO.

In this interview, Steve discusses key points regarding expectations and behaviors that are critical to a business-focused PMO regardless of company size. PMO leaders have a unique opportunity to influence and drive success for the company as a whole and Steve will walk us through some of the shifts that we must make to thrive.

An organization is a collection of forms of capital (Skills, time, plant & equipment etc). Capital would persist in the optimum state for short-term benefits delivery if there was no change. Change drives re-allocation of resources. This is the territory of the organization’s leadership. PMOs at the portfolio and enterprise level either support or trespass on the chair and CEO’s duties.

ALL projects are investments, even though they are rarely defined or managed as such. Money, resources and time are invested because the value expected from the deliverable will ultimately be greater than the cost. Yet that expected value (ROI, NPV, profit) which is the prime metric of ALL OTHER investments, is usually not even estimated on projects. This presentation explains how a PMO can both augment and measure the value of both its portfolio and itself.

ALL projects are investments, even though they are rarely defined or managed as such. Money, resources and time are invested because the value expected from the deliverable will ultimately be greater than the cost.  This interview will cover the mindset shifts that PMO leaders must make in order to align with the business goals of the organization.

Many organizations have attempted implementing methodologies which often results in spending lots of money, time and effort with little return, while the original intent was to increase project success. They find out that the new methodology was unstable for particular projects, the organization or their level of project management maturity. The organization’s project management communities or PMO buy different tools and use different systems to support project delivery. The tool variety creates task duplication and complex supporting processes. In some cases, they use applications that are too enterprise-level or too basic for supporting project management practices. This session is designed to provide practical insight in how to plan, action and ensure your tools and methodologies are fit for purpose, using business analysis techniques and knowledge.

Research has shown that 75% of PMOs are NOT driven by business needs. As a result, these PMOs experience execution difficulties, lose support, and though the PMO may be given a second chance, the PMO manager usually is not. This presentation will provide an introduction to the Business Driven PMO, present examples that show the differences between Business Driven PMOs and Traditional PMOs, and give three steps, two tips, and one PMO golden rule that will ensure that success of your PMO and the success of your PMO manager.

As CEO of Computer Aid, Inc. and Founder of The IT Metrics & Productivity Institute (ITMPI), Tony has personally experienced the power of project management done right. His passion led to the creation of The Automated Project Office to help PMO leaders, PMs, stakeholders, and executives get the information they need to drive real-time decision making. This passion is clear as Tony shares his thoughts on the value that PMOs can drive in organizations from the CEO perspective in this interview.

According to research, the value of PMO is called into question time and again. So, what could the future hold in this fast-changing world? By being able to answer and demonstrate their understanding of the value question, PMOs can accomplish the seemingly impossible – to be accepted in an organisation as a value adding business partner. This workshop will provide critical considerations to develop a new or existing PMOs focusing on two critical elements; strategies and the people that deliver them.

Are you frustrated that no matter what you try, your change projects seem to either fail outright or produce gains that don’t last? The reality is that most changes do fail. As many as 70% of organizational change initiatives fall short of expectations. As a Project Management professional, your career progress hinges on your ability to lead successful and sustainable change. In this highly interactive presentation, you’ll get introduced to how to get beyond the buzzwords and leverage a proven formula for change. The CQ System for Developing Change Intelligence is based on decades of change leadership in the workplace, years of conducting global research on managing change, and study the psychology and neuroscience of change.

Productivity loss can be significant with poorly managed change. As unprepared employees struggle with the changed environment they experience disengagement which may result in high turnover, negativity, and frustration, as well as the use of shadow systems or manual workarounds. Preparing people to quickly adopt and use the change, whether it is technological, cultural or a programmatic can make the difference between success and failure. April will guide you through the framework, tips, and techniques to successfully lead change.

Selecting, implementing and adopting the right kind of PPM solution at the right time can drive a PMO forward; this session explores how PMOs can achieve maximum impact across their organization by enabling better visibility and access to insight and information. Join Nicole as she explores the techniques you need to know to manage a highly effective PPM practice.

Project portfolios are complex systems that follow a simple law of physics: you can only get as many projects through the system as your biggest constraint will allow. This presentation will describe the single technique that takes the most advantage of this concept, and will also discuss common obstacles to achieving dramatic performance improvement–and how to overcome them.

Now that agile methods are here to stay, executives are looking to PMO leaders for answers to fundamental questions: What is the agile movement all about? When does it fit for a given project, and when does it not? Even more puzzling, if agile methods encourage self-organizing teams, then how does that impact the role of a PMO, or even the role of the project manager itself? In this eye-opening session, we will sift out fact from fiction and walk away with actionable tips for evolving your PMO to support agile methods.

Exploring the Agile Mindset: In this high-energy conversation, Jesse and Laura explore the myths and misunderstandings on the divide between PMO thinking and agile thinking.

In 2013 Gartner reported that 68% of stakeholders saw their PMO’s as bureaucratic, is this the impact you want your PMO to have? If not, what is the vision and purpose of your team and what are your plans to get stakeholders to buy into it? This presentation explores the importance of stakeholder buy-in, how to understand the commitment you have now and how to increase it.