Are you a manager or director who needs to ensure that the investment in a support office meets the needs of senior executives while delivering value to the business?
Are you charged with maximising value from the company’s project portfolio and programmes?
Do you support and guide project and programme managers as they carry out their delivery responsibilities?
Are you responsible for setting up / running a PSO?
If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions – this course is for you.
What are the course objectives?
This course will enable you to understand the principles of high value, and highly valued, project and programme support offices (PPSOs). It will help you to ensure that the investment made in these functions is repaid and that they meet both the needs of senior managers charged with maximising the value from the company’s project portfolio and the needs of project and programme managers as they carry out their delivery responsibilities. You will be given the knowledge, and more importantly the understanding, of how you can establish and run the type of PPSO most suitable to your organisation.
What content is covered?
The course looks at the approaches to adopt, and the traps to avoid, when establishing and positioning a project or programme office. It builds on CITI research into the most successful styles and levels of project and programme support offices and demonstrates how they can add value to portfolio management. You will learn to distinguish between project and programme support offices, identifying the different expectations, tools, techniques and roles they play. We also cover what needs to be done to convert a project office to a programme office and how that approach varies in different organisational structures. A working model of a PPSO with exemplar tools is used to illustrate how some of the ideas can be translated into effective actions for when you return to your workplace. This will help you to establish and run the ‘right’ type of PPSO for your organisation.
What are the key topics?
- Stakeholder analysis and management
- Types of support offices
- Best practice examples
- Monitoring & control functions
- Analysis of your PPSOs and identification of improvements
- Methods & quality assurance
- Portfolio planning & monitoring
- Programme and project support offices – the differences
- Tracking benefits
- Managing interdependencies in portfolios and programmes
What is the course format?
An interactive course, using a mixture of lectures, structured discussions, exercises and formal case work. You are invited to take part in benchmarking your current PSO which can then be used on your return to work to help you prioritise changes. Our discussions will be supported by a working model of a PSO that uses three toolkits to illustrate how some of the ideas can be translated into appropriate activities within your organisations.
What is the duration and cost of the course?
This is a 2 day master class.
£800 plus VAT.
We are not currently running this course as an open course available to the general public. However, if you have a minimum of 6 colleagues interested in completing this course please get in touch by clicking below and we can discuss in-company costs and availability.
Register an interest
