The value of the work your project management office (PMO) does will be self-evident to you and everyone else on your team. It can be tougher to show the wider business exactly how your office adds value so we’re looking at how to use training to educate the business about your PMO.
Offering management training gets deeper into showing what your PMO is all about – after raising awareness that your PMO exists, you want people to know why it’s there. It can also have a direct impact on the business’s bottom line.
To help you plan to introduce your management training across the business, we’re going to cover:
- Why it’s a good idea to run management training from your PMO
- How to structure your PMO education package
- What success will look like for the project
- The best business structure to use this PMO education strategy in
Why should my PMO offer management training to the business?
One of the main reasons PMOs fail is because the business can’t understand the value it offers. By disseminating your project management expertise to the wider business, people can see that your PMO understands management.
What’s more, you can directly affect the bottom line of the business. Your office will know how to deliver projects efficiently and you can translate this knowledge into other forms such as daily office management.
Improving how management across the business is done will reflect in lower costs and better margins for the overall business.
How do I structure management training from my PMO for the business?
There are a lot of different ways you can deliver training. What’s important is that you choose one that will be engaging and get the message across.
It’s unlikely you’ll be able to make the training mandatory for every manager in the business. This means it needs to be packed with value so that managers will be keen to access it.
Some of the different ways you can deliver engaging training include:
- Workshops – they let you work with people face to face and help build relationships across the business at the same time. These classes can be interactive and ensure you can develop the product for the future, however, they are time-consuming.
- Ongoing classes – you can create a series of classes that cover different elements of successful management based on project management principles. You can offer a really solid foundation of knowledge but will require a long-term commitment.
- Online recordings – capturing your management knowledge in video form and storing it in your business’s learning management system (LMS) is a great way to offer accessible training. People who want to learn can dip in when they want, but some information could be outdated pretty quickly.
How can I measure the success of my PMO management training?
There are two ways you can look at the success of the management training your PMO offers:
- How much more educated is the business in management best practices
- How the training impacted directly on the business
The first measure is reasonably easy to understand. You can count how many people attended courses and workshops. How often your online videos are watched and for how long is also useful. These measures will show that more people now know what your PMO can do.
As a direct effect on the business, you should see efficiencies improve in business areas that take the training. You’ll need to monitor the KPIs and deliverables of the managers you’ve trained to be able to demonstrate better management and improved returns.
What type of business should a PMO use management training in?
Running training sessions works well in a business that has lots of managers in need of professional development opportunities.
It’s a great way to connect remote managers from across the business and also suits multi-center businesses.
On the flip side, they may not work well in start-ups or small businesses because they focus on delivering results rather than “nice to have” training packages.
Offering management training from your PMO
Offering management training from your PMO to the rest of the business will clearly show that your office understands good management, efficiencies, and administration. You can have a clear effect on business profits which should shield your PMO from any negative restructuring in the future.
