Running a PMO that people don’t hate
Status reports don’t deliver programmes. Decisions do. How to design governance that speeds work up.
Most programme offices are designed to report, not to decide. Teams spend Friday afternoons updating RAG statuses that nobody acts on, and genuine blockers wait two weeks for a steering committee.
Govern by exception
We run weekly forty-five-minute delivery reviews with one rule: only items that need a decision appear on the agenda. Everything else is visible in a shared tracker that leaders are expected to read beforehand.
Blockers are escalated within 48 hours, with a named decision-maker and a deadline. The PMO becomes the team that clears the road, not the team that asks for updates.
