113. How to become a PMO Specialist

Eileen is an accomplished PMO professional, consultant, co-founder of the House of PMO and Consulting Director at PMO Learning. She brings her experience as a practitioner and trainer to everything she does.

Eileen is a Fellow of Association for Project Management, Member of Institute of Directors, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and Project Management Institute, and regularly speaks at conferences throughout the UK and Europe.

Her proudest professional achievement is launching the House of PMO as a new home for all PMO Professionals.

Rachel is an experienced Project, Programme and PMO Professional with over 25 years experience in the NHS and Education sectors and specialises in complex integration and transformation delivery.

In her current PMO role Rachel has worked on the migration of the PMO from serving a single organisation to multiple organisations enabling the delivery and governance of the System Transformation Portfolio in Nottinghamshire.

An experienced Leadership Coach and Mentor, Rachel regularly speaks at conferences and events advocating a coaching and mentoring approach to project and programme management capability development, in particular the role the PMO can play in enabling this.

Rachel's proudest achievement?

• In 2020 I was redeployed from my NHS PMO role to manage the development and delivery programme for Nottinghamshire’s Covid-19 outbreak and community testing response.  Working in an extreme VUCA environment, it was the most challenging programme I have ever undertaken and successfully delivered.

As an Assistant Director, Dianne is responsible for the implementation of the agricultural Development Programme, which includes the preparation of Draft Estimates of Expenditure, Achievement Reports, Implementation Schedules, Briefs, Comments, Cabinet Notes and Requests for Funds. Dianne is the Ministry’s Technical Assistance and the Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Focal Point. Some of Dianne's previous portfolios included, Statistician I, Economist I, Tariff Analyst and Senior Planning Officer. Dianne served on the National Council for Sustainable Development, Project Advisory Committee for Multilateral Environmental Agreements and participated in a training programme in India: International Programme in Financing Inclusive Agriculture and Rural Development.

Dianne has gained many awards and scholarships, which are listed below: 

• An award from the Rotary Club in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, for the best Advanced Level examination results (Secondary level education)
• Dianne was awarded a Scholarship whilst studying for her Masters Degree in Economics, to conduct research in the field of Regulatory Economics, for her Thesis.
• Dianne was awarded a Scholarship by the Government of the Republic of India, to study for a PhD in Economics.
• Dianne was awarded Scholarship by the Government of the Republic of Chile, to participate in the Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation based on International Cooperation.
• Under the Singapore Cooperation Programme’s Training Award, Dianne participated in a training programme titled: Public Private Partnerships: Infrastructure Projects Development

Dianne's proudest achievement giver her passion sustainable rural development is preparing a Rural Electrification Policy and Project Proposal recommending the extension of the electricity Grid and the utilisation of Solar Powered Panels, to provide electrification, for rural communities. Further to this achievement, Dianne is proud to have language skills in Spanish, French and German.

Learner and experimenter. It needs only two words to describe Michał's current role. Learner because he constantly needs to learn to stay on top of the knowledge required to lead teams and train people. Experimenter because he constantly needs to adapt the known and proven to the context of organizations they train or to whom they provide consulting services. The experimenter also because Michał is in charge of assessing and rescuing endangered projects. In OMEC two days are never the same.

Michał also sometimes participates in scientific projects:

• EUREC4A: https://essd.copernicus.org/articles/13/4067/2021/

Michał's proudest achievement this year is being able to certify and re-certify quickly in various PM knowledge areas and also technical areas capitalizing on the knowledge he already has.

Worked in and around PMO for over 20 years – practitioner, recruiter, curator, presenter, writer, training, event organiser and set up the professional membership organisation House of PMO. Today it’s all about creating a home for PMO professionals to help develop themselves, develop others and the PMO profession through informal learning, networking, qualifications, events and having a little fun with it along the way.

• PMO Competency Framework published 2021
• Co-editor – Handbook of People in Project Management – published 2013
• Current careers columnist for PMI Network – from 2013 to present day

Proudest Achievement:

Honestly..? Having a rescue dog from Bosnia who arrived one scared pup and now is the Chief Entertainments Officer at the House of PMO.

Setting up and running several businesses over the last 20 years might also qualify too.