Team turnover can result in significant losses for an organization. It disrupts ongoing projects and negates the investments made in your resources. When multiple employees leave at the same time, the impact can be even more severe. As a PMO manager, it is essential to take proactive steps to prevent this situation and retain talent, particularly your most skilled team members. This is crucial for achieving your current objectives and ensuring long-term success. Here are some suggestions on how to effectively retain talent.

• Building Trust  Talented employees want more than just compensation; they seek respect, value creation, and a trustworthy leader who can guide them toward a successful career. The foundation for keeping your talent lies in establishing trust. This trust begins with respecting their knowledge and skills. To do this, it's important to listen to their ideas. While it's okay to disagree, you must take the time to understand their perspectives, engage in discussions, debate ideas, and explain your decisions. If you notice that a team member is hesitant to express differing opinions, this should be a red flag—it may indicate that they don't feel comfortable speaking to you. Always be truthful with your team. Share your vision so they can genuinely connect with your beliefs. 
• Keep Promises Moreover, it's crucial to keep your promises; don't make commitments you can't fulfill. Remember: if your team dislikes or trusts you, they will likely leave.
• Be inclusive. Make sure everyone feels valued and empowered to succeed. Ask them about their suggestions and feelings about working in the group. A question like "How could this fail?" Create a safe and stress-free community to share their thoughts. 
• Define Clear responsibilities. (warm, connection, compassion, how are you doing? What went well? What's not? How do you feel about the work?) Show interest, care, and pay attention. Assign tasks with pressure, but the team has the skill and capacity to accomplish them. Give work that demands hard work but not burnout. 
• Be a role model. You must do what you say, especially what you require others to follow. Do it yourself in both your words and actions. 
• Help them plan their career path so everyone in your team has a successful career and happy life. Ask, ' What is one thing you need from me to make you successful at work? "Give opportunities to learn and grow. Ask, "What excites you about the future?" to steer them in the right direction. Plan to learn something every week. Ask them what they learned. 
• Give credits. Praise your people publicly for their achievements. Each achievement takes hard work. Each accomplishment is worth celebrating. This is a tangible action to make them feel happy. Life is short. Everyone should only enjoy every moment. You become a cheerleader who supports them in learning, empowers them to achieve, and keeps them from failing to learn. Backup if they make mistakes. Your sincerity will pay back with their loyalty, and they will be delighted working with you as they feel the success themselves.
• Make the work fun. Ask them to share ideas and have fun. (lean to free services) Monthly Fun Day. 

Make retaining your top priority. Make your team know you care about their success. Your sincerity in winning their heart and minds will pay back. On the other hand, build a system with well-defined onboarding and ramp up the process to minimize the impact of personal change. ​

"Project management is the process of leading the work of a team to achieve all project goals within the given constraints. The primary constraints are scope, time, and budget." (Wikipedia)  Project managers create and execute project plans, but the coverage is beyond the plan. Many things can go wrong:

• The scope can change.
• The required time can be underestimated.
• The budget can be over the limit.
• The team has conflicts with different priorities or event personalities.

The project manager needs to keep the project on target with all these dynamics and uncertainty. This is the reality of project management. 

The 10-steps project standardization starts with (1) creating the project charter (also called the project summary) and (2) project onboarding documents which guide the project manager to establish the project control and (3) plan the project with a clear understanding of the project objective, timeline, stakeholders, and methods of execution. (4)The kick-off meeting officially announces the project and starts the project execution process. The process further (5) finalized the requirement and design before (6) development, ensured (7)comprehensive testing and (8) documentation, and governed the (9) production deployment before the (10) final project closure. In the closure, retrospectives collect feedback and learn from lessons and experiences.

The PMO leader should conduct 30-minute review meetings with the project manager to assess the Project Charter, Project Onboarding, Project Kick-off, and Closure.

Rules of Engagement are among the first elements the PMO office establishes. They outline clear expectations and define responsibilities for tasks anticipated in PMO management. This blog will provide an example of a PMO office's Rules of Engagement and discuss the considerations related to them.

General Guideline 
PMO Project Management operation will perform planning, task scheduling, status tracking, reports, escalations, delivery of features checks, documentation standardization review, and assist communication between stakeholders. PMO process generally contains:

• Weekly project status meeting with a report
• Sprint planning/grooming meeting 
• Daily/weekly standup meeting
• Each task is tracked with dev resources, priority, dependency, and deliverable timelines. 
• Track project roadmap, activities, and product changes

PMO project management operation does not engage in detailed requirement clarification, technical design decisions, solution task planning, testing content and execution discussions, technical risk mitigation, issue resolution, user training, production support transition, and technical approvals, including information security, network, platform, performance, and production release approvals.

All PMO-managed escalations require the dev team to perform due diligence and sign off before the escalation.

Detailed Explanation 

You may add more details as your PMO responsibility increases. ​

​Many organizations offer a mentorship program for career development. We give tips on onboarding to a mentorship program, setting the proper exceptions, and getting the most benefits from your mentorship connection. To start, let's first set the expectation. Mentor is not someone who will tells you how to get things done.  Instead,  they can who can you see more potential in you and assist you to find out what you can do. In other words, mentorship works only if we are ready to make some changes and learn ourselves.  We share some tips  to help you make decisions.

Setting Goals 
Defining a clear goal determine the success of each mentoring session. Starting with understanding the needs and challenges and then defining SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound). An example goal is "In the 6 months mentoring session, I'd like to fully understand organization culture, create my PMO team culture practices, establish PMO vision, strategy, and performance KPIs. " Discuss the goal with the mentor, and make sure there is the enthusiasm that helps move things forward. 

Setting Expectations of Relationship 
A relationship with your mentor should be established by getting to know each other. Don't forget to ask about your mentor's professional background, interests, mentoring experiences, and what they plan to help the most. ​

The following is the list of information to share as a mentee: 

• ​Why do you participate in the mentoring program? This can be a job, hobby, or extracurricular activity.
• What are your job and career-related interests, professional challenges, and concerns? 
• What are the projects you have worked on, books you read, and classes are taken? 
• What are your hobbies, favorite travel plans, music, text, and movies? 

A mentee needs to know what a mentor can't do: 

• Directly telling you what to do and not do: A mentor should be a role model. Your mentor might share suggestions on what they would do in a similar situation and how they approach the problem, but it's up to the mentee to decide the best course of action. 
• Give you a performance review: Mentors should be outside your own management chain so you can have open and honest feedback. The mentoring discussion should be kept confidential. 

​Creating an Action Plan 
After the goals are set, the following step is to create action plans. It's the list of tasks needed to meet the goal. The following is an example action plan. "1. Review the corporate culture and have an in-depth discussion for understanding. 2. Create PMO team culture guidance. 3. Create and review the PMO team vision and strategy. 4. Create the team-building plan, including recruiting scorecard 5. Create a PMO KPI dashboard and performance review plan. " The more specific the actions are, the more possible the plan get completed as planned. 

The following are suggestions of actions for mentees:

• Create a clear goal and plan 
• Setup meetings and drive the process
• Be open to a different viewpoint and try new approaches 
• Listen, share, and contribute ideas and thoughts. 
• Keep all the discussions confidential.

​Regularly Checking In
During the mentoring session, keep revisiting the goals to make sure progress is made, everything is on track, and make adjustments as needed. At a particular time, summarize the progress and discuss the achievements.

The following are suggested actions for regular check-ins:

• Is the goal still clear and relevant? 
• Is the relationship healthy? 
• Is the communication clear and concise? 

Closing the Session
At the end of the mentoring session, start with a summary of what was learned and achieved and celebrate the success. Ask the mentor to suggest preparing for the future to reduce anxiety about the change around the corner. ​ Then redone the relationship post the mentoring session and communicate the future engagement plan, such as what's the connection and how often to connect. It has to be a mutually desired plan. 

In summary, a mentee should be in the driving seat to nurture the mentoring relationship and make it impactful. ​

Question to Ask When Working with Your Mentors

1. Do I have clear goals for the mentoring partnership and for myself? Am I on course?
2. Am I documenting the action items needed to meet my goals by creating tasks in your Mentoring Plan?
3. Could I have done something better? 
4. Do I need to extend the mentoring period?

Today, we continue to explore AI/ML and recommend the AWS AI use cases exploration website. The website provides many used cases where you can filter based on your interests. 

For example, we explored and summarized the cases of AI improving efficiency and productivity. 

• Finding information quickly: AI/ML can help us quickly locate content or data through chatbot, searching, or data analysis. The information is more ritual to us now regardless of the continent and the language in which it is written. If you are performing research for market insights, analyzing customer sentiment, or even searching for regulations, think about using AI to source the result first.
• Creating report: polishing with AI/ML, we should worry less about how to present our result rather than what we want to put in because AI can generate nicely format, data representation, and well-written reports for us.
• Code degeneration: coding is a tool that everyone can use because AI can write code for us. We need to describe what we want, which can also be extended to images and videos.

If you have other use cases in mind that we may have missed in our analysis of productivity and efficiency optimization, we'd love to hear from you. Share your thoughts and let's continue the conversation.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the project management position is predicted to grow 7% until 2033, with an average yearly salary of $98,580 in 2023 (around $47/hour). However, the actual pay could vary across industries and companies. 

This month, our analysis will focus on AI/ML-related project management, a field that is currently in high demand. We will analyze the job requirements, skills, and qualifications, highlighting the value of your expertise. Let's look at an example job opening: 

Netflix: Product Manager, ML Platform: Training (10/14/2024)
Netflix offers entertainment services with 278 million paid memberships in over 190 countries. It is one of the big five tech companies called "FAANG." These companies are known for high pay and extensive company benefits. The position is part of a team building the Machine Learning Platform (MLP) to improve researchers' and engineers' productivity. 

• The qualifications include covering all phases of machine learning development at Netflix, including data processing, training, evaluation, deployment, and operations. AI projects require the PM to know how to manage the project lifecycle, which involves collecting data, creating training, engaging customers for evaluation, and performing operations efficiently. 
• It's worth noticing the role of "enhancing data scientist productivity" in the job description. This usually means getting the data quickly and with high quality and facilitating evaluation testing with users. It's a role that requires a solid understanding and a mastery of Agile project management methodology. The requirement for building a "roadmap of platform capabilities necessary to accelerate ML development, especially for Generative AI use cases" is a product management role. This requires working with customers to define OKR and prioritizing the feature roadmap. One technique is defining the platform's unique selling proposition (USP). Another is creating a user advisory board to collect product requirements and feedback. ​​

Netflix: Principal Product Manager, Data Platfor -Analytics Platform (10/18/2024)
​Netflix seeks a Principal Technical Product Manager to lead its Data Platform, focusing on optimizing data utility across the company by managing analytics platforms and driving technological innovations. This role demands a seasoned professional to develop strategic visions customer use cases to engineering features, foster cross-functional collaborations, and spearhead product roadmaps, all aimed at enhancing both the technical and non-technical user experience. Key Skills and Experience Required:

• Strategic Leadership: Ability to shape and implement strategies for data platforms (Spark, Trino, Airflow, Iceberg, S3) that align with Netflix’s business goals
• Technical Expertise: Extensive experience in data analytics or ML platforms, with proficiency in Compute engines, Orchestration systems, and Lakehouse technologies.
• Experience: Minimum of 8 years in technical product management, including significant experience in managing large-scale projects and teams.

To understand, Netflix infrastructure, check this Linkedin post: 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐍𝐞𝐭𝐟𝐥𝐢𝐱 𝐁𝐞𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐂𝐮𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐢𝐧? This is a part of management not a product management position however, if you have The technical background and would like to extend your skills to customer driven projects and strategy, then this is a choice.

​Meta: GenAI Project Manager, Product Data Operations (10/21/2024)
​Meta, formerly known as Facebook, is a global technology powerhouse renowned for connecting billions worldwide through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Oculus. The company's culture emphasizes rapid innovation, open communication, and initiative, encouraging employees to lead projects and innovate. The Project Manager position recently posted is their Product Data Operations team to advance GenAI programs. The job requires strong leadership and the ability to manage complex, technology-driven projects.

• Experience Required: At least 12 years in project management, specializing in technology-focused projects, risk management, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Desirable Skills and Knowledge: Proficiency in critical thinking, communication, SQL, or Excel/Google Sheets, with experience in GenAI or machine learning, such as data annotation project. 
• we need to note this requirement ”Build strategic capabilities (e.g., data-driven processes, frameworks, analytical tools) to identify and prioritize opportunities to accelerate GenAI product development cycles” This means  it requires project managers to know how to use analytic to an AI to drive project Execution.

We hope this analysis helps you prepare for the career changes. Let us know your analysis and  if it is helpful for job searching and career planning. 

We find the "Delivery 6" concept brought by Brendon Baker worth looking at when exploring new strategies or evaluating change proposals in organizations.

• ​What exactly are we doing?
• How will we do it?
• How much will it cost?
• Who will we need?
• What could go wrong?
• When will we do it?

In other words, before starting any project or change management plan, these questions remind us to let go of our own agenda, listen, and be open-minded. ​

After identifying people with common interests or attributes, people form a group or circle for comfortable interactions. Within the group, we trust, help, and share information. Outsiders are typically excluded, which causes the problem of missing opportunities, such as creative thinking.

To avoid group biases, we should start getting to know people by asking the following questions:

• Do I belong to the group the person is in?
• What are their interests and background?
• How can I become part of their inner circle?

Before tackling difficult problems, it's crucial to establish a connection with the person we're dealing with and become a part of their "we". We can accomplish this by learning about their background, including where they grew up, what language they speak, their hobbies and interests, what motivates them, their career objectives, the subjects they enjoy working on, and their past accomplishments. By obtaining this information and establishing a connection or belonging, we can be more effective in addressing their challenges. We need to be ally first. 

The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is put in tepid water, which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death". The one thing we learned from this is how to interact with individuals during change management: make small tasks one at a time to progress in the desired direction. 

Case Study - Meeting Reduction
Let's look at a case study. When we observe project managers join too many dev team meetings, we decide to make the change to pull the PMs out of the unnecessary dev meetings to focus on projects.

The change management strategy incorporates the following: (1) reducing attendance from one meeting at a time, letting people get used to not having PMs on the call first, and then pulling the PMs out completely. (2) breaking down the stakeholder alliance by asking questions like, "Why is the meeting is required? Are the objectives of the meeting?". Then, figure out which stakeholder to start with and start from there. ​

The process turns out to be effective, but it requires patience and carefully plotted changing paths. Do you have any examples or more thoughts on this? ​

Metrics like Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) provide valuable insights into PMO performance, which helps the project team strive for high achievements. PMO suggests portfolio managers and project managers follow the guide to define KPIs. 

• Choose Realistic Yet Stretching Goals. The goals should be stretching but SMART-Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. 
• Limit KPIs. We recommend tracking only a few KPIs, like 3 KPIs, to keep the team stays focused at a time. The ideal KPIs should be measurable in real-time to adjust project team actions. 
• Keep Cycle Short. We recommend a 6-weekly cycle (42 days) for quick loopback, starting from a goal-setting session and ending with a reflection to celebrate the achievement and discuss the lesson learned. 

PMO suggests the following Portfolio KPI examples: 

• Project Management
  • 100% Project Documentation Standardization
  • 90% of stakeholders give feedback
  • Keep <5 overdue tasks at all time 
  • 9 out of 10 satisfaction from 90% of stakeholders 
  • 95% status meeting attendance rate with 100% participation
  • 90% green status for all projects 
• Operation Efficiency 
  • 98% utilization in the current forecasted budget
• Resource management
  • 100% resources allocated to project tasks
  • 0% resources under-allocated + over-allocated with tasks
  • 100% skillset coverage cover > 1 year portfolio forecast 
  • Reduce per person cost by 10% 
  • Keep resource churn rate < 10% per quarter. 
  • Keep average resource industry experience > 5 years. 
• Customer Satisfaction/Loyalty (How do customers see us?) 
  • > 4/5 customer satisfaction score 
  • >4/5 customer net promoter score 
• ​Execution Focus (What must we excel at?) 
  • If key resources are focused on strategic projects
• Strategic Growth/Innovation (How can we continue improving and creating value?) 
  • >20% future-looking project

After setting up the KPIs, the project manager and portfolio manager need to guide and assist the project team in achieving better results.

The Burke-Litwin change model connects 12 strategic, operational, and individual factors in change management, including external environment, leadership, mission and strategy, culture, management practices, structure, system, work unit climate, skill and job match, motivation, individual needs and values, performance, and criticism.

Change managers have to face the reality of not many people being aware of the urgency of change, especially when people still enjoy and are satisfied with the present easy-going life. Change managers have to be prepared to answer questions like "Why do I need to work hard to make a change?", "Are there really risks ahead?" or "Should we change now?".

The project charter page is one of the" Big Three" project documents, along with the project plan and requirement document. It serves as the source of truth, summarizing the project's key artifacts and answering the questions of the project's why, what, how, and when questions.  As part of PMO best practices, we would create a project chart page from day one and keep it updated at all times during project operation.  

The content includes the project scope, benefits, timeline, team, stakeholders, and risks. The following is the best practice for creating and maintaining a project chapter page:  

• All summary pages are owned and reviewed by the portfolio manager before publishing. 
• A consistent project name is needed across all project pages/documentation. 
• Clear project scope should include in-scope, out-of-scope, and assumptions.
• All the resources need a % allocation, and the assignment should be updated as required every week. 
• All stakeholders need to be added, and we need to confirm that the user has access to the document. We would require all stakeholders to access the project summary page unless exception approval is given.
• All major project milestones need to be listed and tracked with "Not Started," "Completed," or "In Progress." '
• For the communication plan, please include the answers to the following questions: 
  • How often will you update the external stakeholders, project owners, and team members?
  • Who receives the report?
  • Who needs to be aware and informed about the project?
  • Which tool is to be used for the distribution of the message?
  • Where is project information stored?
  • Add risk and assumptions.
• ​RAID in project management stands for risks, assumptions, issues, and dependencies. ​

The best practice requires creating a project charter before project planning and the kick-off meeting, which is shared with all stakeholders. Reviewing the page regularly (at least weekly) is essential to ensure all the information is up-to-date and accurate. ​  

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has impacted many areas of work and daily life, and project management is no exception. AI will change how we manage projects. Let's delve into this topic today.

What does it mean to apply AI to project management? 
AI can take over the administrative tasks in project management, such as planning, tracking, and reporting, allowing project managers to focus more on communication, influence, and leadership. This includes selecting projects for mobilization, generating project plans, prioritizing tasks, allocating resources, resolving dependency issues, tracking project status, and forecasting potential risks. AI is attractive because it is faster, can assess more data points, and stays more rational than humans to prevent biases and cognitive limitations.

With AI, project managers have more time to build relationships with stakeholders, manage more projects, and perform strategic tasks!

Can you be specific on the areas in which AI should be applied?
Project managers can use AI to augment skills and boost efficiency and strategic decision-making. These areas include:

• Innovation: AI can contribute to brainstorming sessions for new ideas and extensive knowledge exploration. It can also source information for project inception research, including industry standard, market trend, sourcing information and solution options. 
• Prioritization: AI serves as a reliable support system, analyzing the requirements, customer feedback sentiments, and market conditions to ensure project strategic alignment for prioritization.
• Launching Readiness Check: AI can evaluate project readiness for mobilization. For example, AI can determine the possibility of success, resource readiness, technology, and support conditions. We can calculate the resource skills to ensure that they are ready to perform the necessary tasks in the project with all the required support and resource readiness. It is also a great tool to review industry standards and trends again. 
• Time Forecasting: AI can forecast the project timeline based on task and resource evaluations.
• Risk Prediction and Mitigation: AI can predict potential risks based on the existing conditions and suggest risk mitigation plans.
• Portfolio Evaluation: AI can evaluate the portfolio's project value, status, and execution capability. It can also simulate the results of serious, high-risk decisions.

​
Are we there yet? How far? 
AI in project management is still in its early stages. While ChatGPT can generate a project plan with a comprehensive list of tasks and assign them to the right team, it needs more intelligence analysis to ensure project operation success. This includes dependency analysis, risk analysis, and proper task assessment.

However, using ChatGPT to generate project communications, plan meeting agendas, and summarize meeting minutes in real time is ready for prime time. For example, Grammarly can be used to check grammar and spelling errors and make word choices. The service is reliable and produces consistent quality results.

How can we adopt AI in our organization?
This is the most critical question to answer right now. We must adopt AI immediately to stay ahead of the curve and remain competitive. The challenge is that there needs to be ready-to-use ML mode and data to start training AI. The most critical missing piece is data. High-quality data would enable AI to learn in the right direction.

To adopt AI in project management, we must take the following actions:

• Change how we work on projects to ensure clean and ready-to-use project data for machine learning (ML). The data should include tasks, resources, time, priority, values, strategic alignment indication, dependencies, risks, skill set requirements, success factors, status with key performance indicators, stakeholders, and project charter summaries.
• Create tools to generate project plans with predefined structures and milestones for data collection.
• Define metadata for essential project elements, including tasks, resources, risks, priority, and strategic alignment. Collect data and assist machines in learning and improving their understanding of these elements.
• Provide reports to obtain insights for supervised ML training. 

It is crucial for any organization to strategically and urgently adopt AI in project management. The first step to preparing project data for AI analytics is implementing change management in their creation and maintenance.

Project managers need to put in quite some effort to build good relationships with developers and stakeholders. In summary, project managers need to:

• Provide meaningful assistance to developers, such as helping with tasks and time management and solving communication issues.
• Facilitate stakeholder communications through project requirements, plans, and status reports.

Let's explore signs indicating something is wrong with project managers' engagement.

Being a poor listener doesn't necessarily mean we don't listen, but more that people's actual needs are not heard. Understanding people's real intentions, challenges, and the help they need before taking suggestions or actions. Being a "poor listener" could be the first alert that the communication channel is broken. Sometimes, project managers need to proactively consider the developers ' situation purely when updating the plan or documentation, which can cause friction.

Lack of organization or planning is a disadvantage for any project manager because their primary responsibility is to help the team organize communication, tasks, schedules, and priorities. It's essentially the time management skill that every project manager has to prioritize. Comments about a lack of organization come from constantly not clearly defining the task scope and timeline or shifting schedules and priorities. Maintaining a stable project execution pace is critical to avoid falling into this trap.

Micromanagement can be translated as "project managers are essentially dictators telling people what to do and chasing results." Project managers are indeed responsible for deliverables, assigning tasks, and chasing results. However, after providing reasons to help people buy into our actions, it's crucial to step back and let the team take ownership. This approach fosters a sense of trust and empowers the team to take initiative. It's essential to avoid too many meetings as they could be distractions.

Poor communication means not conveying the message at the right time, in the correct format, or with the right content. This requires understanding the context and the audience and adjusting our communication and what to communicate. Here, we have to pay attention to team building.

This summary can be a checklist for project managers to reflect on.

PMOs must navigate different negotiation scenarios to achieve successful outcomes. Here are some strategies that can be used in common situations and the strategy for solving the problem through influencing.

New PMO Engagement When starting a new PMO, the strategy should be building trust first. The three critical elements in the trust triangle could be the focus: capability, empathy, and values. This can be achieved by taking on challenging tasks to demonstrate expertise, pitching new project initiatives to management, showcasing values through small wins, and engaging in in-depth discovery conversations.

New Portfolio Planning Before kicking off portfolio planning, the strategy should start with understanding the client's needs and gradually engage with them. The key is to ask questions such as:

• What would you like PMO to do for your organization?
• Tell me more about why you need this service.
• What are the reasons behind your request?

Mirroring and paraphrasing can also be used to understand the client's requirements better.

Project Managers Report to Dev Managers There will be resistance to moving PMs to PMO leaders. To resolve the issue, it should start with understanding the key factors driving the rejection: (1) The Dev Manager thought they could do the job. (2) Adding the PMO leader into the conversation could steal the thunder of successful projects. To influence, PMO leaders can start by showing the RACI matrix to demonstrate that project management responsibility asking questions:

• Do you like to spend time guiding the PMs daily, including planning engagement, reviewing the performance, and prioritizing the following actions?
• Would you like to be held accountable for operation efficiency?

Customers Not Engaging with PMO. The strategy is to start the request gate review, where the PMO leader hosts the project planning meeting, setting up the agenda to listen to all the requests and expectations. The PMO leader then decides the commitments and plans for the project. The review ensures consistent prioritization and optimization.

Project Managers not interested in PMO  The strategy is to start regular planning with project managers to ensure processes are consistently followed and optimized to show benefits. 

Conclusion Effective negotiations are essential for a Project Management Office (PMO) to successfully navigate various engagement scenarios. Adaptability is vital, from building trust to addressing resistance through inquiry and restructuring reporting lines. By utilizing these strategies, the PMO can ensure its crucial role in delivering high-quality project management services and become essential contributors to organizational success.