As Q1 of 2022 beds in, you need to have a set of goals laid out for your project management office (PMO) to give you and your team a roadmap for success. We’ve got a guide for how to set goals for your PMO in 2022 with a seven-step framework to get you on track.
Having goals will ensure that your PMO will keep improving and developing rather than coasting along with reports and documentation. You want to make sure you’re offering value and contributing to business strategy to remain relevant.
There are three key areas that you should be setting goals for covering the next 12 months:
- Your PMO
- Your PMO team and colleagues
- Your own professional development
In future posts, we’ll give you specific examples of how to create goals for each. Here, we’ll give you a seven-step framework for setting PMO goals to apply to every area.
1. Take stock of your PMO and know where you want to be
Before you can decide what you want to happen in the next 12 months, you need to know where your PMO stands. This includes looking at the goals and targets you’re currently working towards and the capacity and skills you have on hand.
Next, you need to figure out what you want your PMO, your team, and your career to look like in 12 months time. When planning this, you need to look at the strategic goals of the business in general and understand how the work of your PMO can contribute to that.
The gap between where you are and where you want to be is what you need to fill up with an action plan.
2. Break down PMO goals into achievable tasks
Once you know where you will be in 12 months, you need to look at the smaller steps that will get you to your PMO goals.
These steps can be in the form of a weekly or monthly plan of actions or realigning PMO or personal KPIs. You need to create a plan that will get you to your final results, in a similar way that projects create a project plan to figure out how to complete deliverables.
3. Set specific and measurable expectations
Your PMO goals need to be easy for everyone working on them to understand. Assign outcomes that are easy to measure and clarify so everyone knows when it’s been achieved.
A good PMO goal in this context would be:
“Deliver 98% of projects on time and on budget”
Whereas a non-specific, unmeasurable goal would be:
“Get more projects delivered”
4. Assign tasks to team members
Not all PMO goals are your responsibility – you need to delegate responsibility and accountability to others on the team.
Sometimes this will be obvious, such as when you want to upskill a specific person or improving a specific process. Other times, you’ll need to carefully consider who to assign a goal to.
Giving extra responsibility will make the people in your PMO more engaged and feel more valued, as well as making sure someone is always focused on each goal you’ve set.
5. Focus on learning
Each goal should enhance the overall knowledge and skill set of your PMO. You want your PMO to be in a better position to deliver in 12 months, and this means having more knowledge and better skills in your office.
6. Make your PMO goals relevant
It’s important that everyone can see how your goals fit into the business strategy and how projects are delivered. Every time there’s a discussion about goals, be sure to draw the line back to the bigger picture so everyone knows what they’re working towards.
7. Clearly define your PMO goals
Everyone needs to be onboard with your PMO goals, and you need to ensure there’s no room for misunderstanding.
Assigning values and measures to your goals, as we noted earlier, will help. Make sure that stakeholders like the C-suite and project managers are all on the same page with your goals.
Setting goals for your PMO in 2022
Goals give your PMO guidance and will help your office get better, more agile, and offer more value to the business. Knowing how to set goals for 2022 using our seven-step framework will ensure that you get a great start to the year.
