Project Management Office (PMO) for Management Consultants

What is the aim of this course?

Sometimes to create value in the firm or manage a huge number of complicated projects you have to set up a Project Management Office (PMO). PMO is responsible for making sure that all strategic projects will be delivered on time. PMO has to also analyze and select projects and support project managers in managing project delivery. Building and running PMO is pretty difficult, especially when it comes to selecting the right projects and later on implementing them. I will teach you in this course how to do it efficiently. We will look at different types of PMO setups for different purposes. In this course you will learn:

1. In what situation PMO is used and how its goals differ depending on the situation

2. How to select the right projects to implement using PMO

3. In the attached  resources, you will also find examples of PMO deliverables you will have to create and examples of tools you can use to run the PMO efficiently

This course is based on my 15 years of experience as a consultant in top consulting firms and as a Board Member responsible for strategy, performance improvement, and turn-arounds in the biggest firms from Retail, FMCG, SMG, B2B, and services sectors that I worked for. I have carried out or supervised over 90 different projects in different industries that generated in a total of 2 billion in additional EBITDA. I have also built and supervised PMOs in 10 different organizations. On many occasions, I had to grow, coach, and supervise managers, directors, and CEOs. On the basis of what you will find in this course, I have trained in person over 100 consultants, business analysts, and managers who now are Partners in PE and VC funds, Investment Directors and Business Analysts in PE and VC, Operational Directors, COO, CRO, CEO, Directors in Consulting Companies, Board Members, etc. On top of that my courses on Udemy were already taken by more than 182 000 students including people working in EY, McKinsey, Walmart, Booz Allen Hamilton, Alvarez & Marsal, PwC, Dell, Walgreens, Adidas, Orange, and many others

I teach through cases, so you will have a lot of lectures showing examples of analyses, tools, and end-products of PMO. To make the course more realistic and applicable we will go over many examples from our consulting practice, where we had to build and run a PMO. To every lecture, you will find attached (in additional resources) the Excels as well as additional presentations, and materials shown in the lecture so as a part of this course you will also get a library of ready-made analyses that can, with certain modifications, be applied by you in your work.

Why did I decide to create this course?

Building and running a PMO requires a specific approach and set of skills that you are not able to acquire easily. There are also hardly any practical resources that would help you in this job. Therefore, we have decided to describe our approach to this sort of project. This course will help you create a PMO, select the right projects, and deliver outstanding results to stakeholders (Board of Directors, Inventors, and your boss). What you will learn in this course will be extremely useful not only in consulting but also if you want to create a PMO internally to support the value creation process or to speed up the change management process. By giving you exposure to real-life cases and analyses I want to improve your skills in building PMO, selecting projects, and delivering tangible results through the PMO. Thanks to this course, you will know what and how to do once you are given the task of setting up and running a PMO.

To sum it up, the course will help you become an expert in building and running PMO on the level of McKinsey, BCG, Bain, PwC, Deloitte, EY, and other top consulting firms. That is why, I highly recommend this course not only to Management Consultants and Project Managers that have to advise their customer but also to Investment Directors working for PE, Directors, and Managers responsible for running internal PMO departments.

In what way will you benefit from this course?

The course is a practical, step-by-step guide loaded with tons of analyses, tricks, and hints that will significantly improve the speed with which you understand, and analyze the business considered for acquisition. There is little theory – mainly examples, a lot of tips from my own experience as well as other notable examples worth mentioning. Our intention is that thanks to the course you will learn:

1. In what situation PMO is used and how its goals differ depending on the situation

2. How to select the right projects to implement using PMO

3. In the attached  resources, you will also find examples of PMO deliverables you will have to create and examples of tools you can use to run the PMO efficiently

You can also ask me any questions either through the discussion field or by messaging me directly.

How the course is organized?

The course is divided currently into the following sections:

• Introduction. We begin with a little intro to the course as well as some general info on how the course is organized

• When PMO is used. In the second section, I will show you different situations in which PMO can be used. We will go through the difference and the goals of PMOs. PMO can be created in a Juggernaut situation, Performance Improvement situation, Turn Around situation, Private Equity situation, Drastic growth situation, and others

• How to build PMO? In this section, I will show you the step-by-step process that will help you establish the PMO.

• Project selection. In the 4th section, I show you different frameworks that you can use to select the projects that you should concentrate on as a PMO. We will discuss the Strategic alignment framework, Value proposition alignment framework, Portfolio decision-making, and my favorite one - The bottleneck Framework.

• Recruit & Train the PMO team. In the 5th section, I will briefly discuss the process of recruiting and training team members that you will need to run the PMO. If you are working in a consulting firm you simply get well-prepared people, but if the PMO is built internally then the task is much more difficult.

• PMO Deliverables. In this lecture, we will discuss what you should deliver as a PMO. There will be examples of the main deliverables.

• Tools used by PMO. In the last section, we will briefly discuss the tools used by the PMO such as project management tools, slides templates, and a library of slides.

You will be able also to download many additional resources

• Useful frameworks and techniques

• List of resources useful during performance improvement projects

• Selected analyses are shown in the course

• Links to additional presentations, articles, and movies

• Links to books worth reading

At the end of my course, students will be able to…

• How to set up a Project Management Office (PMO)

• Identify the type of PMO you have to build

• Select the right projects that will deliver the biggest value

• How to prepare your team members for the work in the PMO

• What type of deliverables and tools you will need

Who should take this course? Who should not?

• Project Managers

• Managers responsible for building and running Project Management Office (PMO)

• Board Members

• Investment Directors

• Management Consultants selling the PMO service

• Business Analysts & Management Consultants working within PMO

• Directors

What will students need to know or do before starting this course?

• Basic or intermediate Excel

• Basic knowledge of economics or finance