Project portfolios are complex systems that follow a simple law of physics: you can only get as many projects through the system as your biggest constraint will allow. This presentation will describe the single technique that takes the most advantage of this concept, and will also discuss common obstacles to achieving dramatic performance improvement–and how to overcome them.

The world is experiencing a boom in the coaching industry. Gone are the days that the term ‘coach’ was only heard on the sports field! Whilst coaching has in fact existed in business over the years its often been limited to niche areas such as Executive Coaching, Sales Coaching and Career Coaching. In project management and more specifically PMO we don’t often associate our role with coaching which is such an untapped opportunity. In this presentation, we will explore the coaching in its simplest form. By understanding what coaching is ( and isn’t) we can delve deeper to recognize and appreciate where as PMO leaders we can really have an impact on not only ourselves but our project teams.

It’s not often you get the chance to build project practices from virtually scratch. Even rarer when you can point to your work leading to a multi-hundred percent increase in projects shipped. In 2010 I was asked to create a program management office for a new division of Hitachi GST (The hard drive division of the company). Stepping into the chaos I quietly went about creating a program process based on the values and principles of agile and lean. This is my story.