Part of a well-rounded and successful project management office (PMO) is offering training to your team. How can you go about digitising your PMO training?
It’s not enough to have physical folders of training information on hand. On the other hand, it can seem like overkill to send your team into a classroom for some training. If your team works remotely, this is an even bigger challenge.
Offering training to your project managers and their teams will bring an array of benefits to your PMO and the business. The challenge is how to deliver that training effectively. To that end, we’re going to answer:
- Why do I need to digitise my PMO’s training?
- What do the planning stages of training digitisation look like?
- How do I choose where to store my digitised PMO training programme?
Readying you for your journey to a having a modern training package.
What are the benefits of digitising my PMO training?
Offering training for your project managers and their teams offers a range of benefits. You can offer training for a host of things that vital to the success of your PMO. This training can cover:
- Onboarding new project members
- Refreshing your project teams on your project methodology
- Training specific skills that are needed for new projects
- Legally required training such as health and safety
By making this training digitised, your PMO will be nimbler and more responsive. For example, a digitised training package ensures that when your team are working remotely, they can still access what they need.
When you store your training on the cloud, through a learning management system (LMS), you are able to future-proof your training. It’s easy to add more courses and you can support growth in the business by offering your training to new projects in new locations.
How do approach digitising my PMO training?
Once you’ve decided it’s the right time to get your PMO’s training fully digitised and online, you need to find a platform. At the point of digitisation, it’s a good idea to get your existing training packages online first – you can add new courses later, and even still outsource more technical training[JR1] .
To digitise your PMO training, you need to first:
- Understand the goals of the process, whether you’re looking to upskill your project managers, increase employee retention, or speed up project delivery.
- Look at the projects coming up to prioritise the training that needs to get online.
- Know your team and what hard and soft skills they need going forward and what is expected in their role.
Once you know what digitisation needs to look like, it’s time to find an LMS.
How do I choose which LMS to use for my PMO?
Every LMS is different. What will always be the same is that they offer Software-as-a-Service to upload and deliver the training content of your PMO. Be sure to bring your company’s HR department in on the decision – it’ll be prudent to use the same LMS across the company, where possible.
Before approaching different LMS companies, you need to know your fundamentals, such as:
- How many users you’ll have
- Where your users are based
- What languages your users speak
- The type of courses you need, e.g. interactivity, quizzes, certification
- Who will be creating the courses
- How you want your training to be delivered
Understanding how time consuming it will be to upload content on your chosen platform will be important for your planning. You also need the training to be flexible so that the system can adapt to classroom use where needed.
Ideally, the LMS you choose will be flexible in storage capacity, have an easy interface for uploading and creating content, and will be fully compatible with your current technologies. Also look at the reporting capabilities so you know the data you’re going to be able to measure.
The take home
Digitising your PMO training will see your team learn more skills in an effective and flexible way. Your PMO will be able to prove the effectiveness of its training programme by having data from an LMS to back it up. An LMS won’t be a complete solution – some skills may still need to be outsourced – but you’ll have a package of training that will be engaging for your team. Digital training in your PMO will easily grow as the company and your projects expand.
