Having strategic goals for your project management office (PMO) are important to ensure your office is always contributing towards business success. You should be setting goals for each PMO team member for 2022, as well as PMO-level goals.
With well-thought-out goals and good communication, everyone in your PMO will understand the office priorities for the year ahead. As well as that, your people need something more personal to relate to.
The goals and objectives still need to tie back to the overall business strategy, but team member goals in a PMO can be personal, too. Here, we’re going to look at:
- How to make PMO goals important to individuals
- What you can do to improve your people and your office
- How you can improve communications for everyone
- Making career and personal development PMO goals
Helping you get the year started right.
Make PMO goals relevant to your team
You will have a range of objectives for your PMO for the year ahead. While the leader of a PMO will ultimately be responsible for these goals, you can assign responsibility to your PMO colleagues.
There will be pain points that some PMO workers come across more than others, such as a PMO admin being more aware of invoice delays or a PMO specialist knowing where the skills gaps are.
Whatever your office goals, make a team member responsible for monitoring and reporting. Delegate some decision-making power and encourage feedback. This will make your team feel valued in their role and should see better performance.
Upskilling for everyone
Professional and career development is vital to everyone on your team. You need to make sure that your PMO has the financial and time budget to allow for training and upskilling.
There are different ways that you can administer this target – to make it truly personal, you can ask each person to source their own courses. This will make sure it’s relevant to their career path and will be engaging for the team member.
Be sure that this goal is monitored, especially if you offer a high level of autonomy. It’s easy for things like training to take a backseat when there is project work to look after, but make sure everyone keeps an eye on their careers, too.
Set goals around communication
Everyone needs to stay on the same page in a PMO, but this can be challenging, especially when your PMO is working remotely.
You can set clear goals about communication expectations for each person, based on their role. The people that work closely with projects and project managers may need to send out a project overview each week, while team members who are more process-focused may only report once a month.
Tailoring the communication requirements rather than having a blanket standard will ensure people don’t feel like they’re getting spammed.
Provide on-the-job training
When looking for a promotion or a new role elsewhere, it’s likely people in your PMO will be asked for experience. This can be hard to get outside of your direct employment.
You can help directly improve career prospects for your team by letting them shadow other people across the business. As well as helping build an internal network of contacts, everyone in your office will have a chance to see a different function of the business.
Set the goal that each team member must spend a minimum amount of time shadowing a colleague and be sure to check up on it during performance reviews.
Offer personal development
Keeping targets relevant to the business is important, but you also need to balance this with nurturing your individuals. This helps staff retention and reduces recruitment costs in the long-run.
Have a one-on-one conversation with each of your team members and understand what they would like to do to develop personally. It could be things like:
- Taking personal interest courses on a platform like Udemy
- Having a gym membership to improve their fitness
- Changing hours to work around an out of work activity
Once you understand what each person wants, you can help support them and set soft goals for them. You’ll get a stronger connection with your team and be able to offer practical support to help them.
Team member goals for your PMO
Setting goals for your PMO team in 2022 needs to focus on the business and their personal aspirations. You’ll see a closer alignment to the business aims when each person has their own goals, and everyone should be happier and more engaged at work.
