Book writing week 10

And it’s finished

Its finished

For those people who have been following this blog for the last 10 weeks you will know I have been spending the time writing the PMO Services and Capabilities manual. Well after 10 long weeks I have managed to get to the end of the writing process. It is now over to the reviewers to find out which services are missing, and to correct any other errors which have crept in along with way.

What have I learnt about book writing?

I think the first thing for anyone else writing a book is to be focussed and dedicated. It is good to have a routine to fit into. Personally, I chose to start the day with a quick jog around the block, this allowed me time away from the computer to compose my thoughts for the day. What was I going to write about, how was I going to write it?

After a while, when I decided to use a burn up/burn down chart to work out my progress, I realised how many services I was likely to write in a day, and therefore I was able to use that as a target for whether I had a good days’ writing or whether it was a bad day. Sometimes if it isn’t going well then it is time to walk away and gather your thoughts. Hence having a dog that could be walked was a good afternoon distraction.

Without targets to aim for it is very easy to get distracted … oh is that a bird in the garden … and loose focus on what you were doing. Once you have lost focus then it takes time to get back into the groove again

What have I learnt about the PMO?

A learning point is how vast the PMO role is. It covers a lot, no wonder people, me included, have difficulty in summarizing up the role in a succinct manner. It means that no 2 PMOs are alike. I don’t think I will ever see a PMO team and definitely not one person doing all of these services at the same time (there really isn’t enough time in the day). Hence the depth and breadth of the PMOs out there.

I learnt how intertwined the PMO services are with each other. If you have a service for developing a framework, you can’t really do that without communicating the framework, and you can’t assess how well projects are adhering to that framework without the other 2 services.

Some of the services are difficult to classify, as previously mentioned if there is a service of review business case, does it fit into benefits management, financial management or portfolio management? Thanks to the readers of this blog I think we have a way around that now.

What’s next?

Well the book needs to go away to be reviewed and I am relying on my co-authors for their expertise here.

For me personally I now need to find something that will occupy me. If anyone has a (paid) job they know about then I would be more than happy to hear from you.