Carrying on with the PMO CV tips series, today we will look at Planning. Planning is one of the key areas to success with every element of project management and the PMO pays a large part in ensuring plans are in place and fit for purpose. There are many areas of planning you may be involved in and it is important that you are addressing this core competency on your CV. I have come across many PMO roles which take a different slant to the amount of input  required to programmes of work – some PMOs write the project plans for the project managers whereas others coach PMs to write them and of course the is cross programme planning to take into consideration also.

Portfolio planning is a strong area within PMOs and again it comes down to who is putting these together, monitoring and updating them. Think about all aspects of your input into planning and write a list, once you have a strong list, you need to then think about how you should convey this information on the CV. For example you may be able to box together certain elements of the planning into 2 or 3 core areas, if one area is around coaching and advising PMs on putting together plans then talk through what you actually do to achieve this. In larger organisations with big teams you may find that running workshops is an effective approach. Talk through how you put together the workshop materials and run the events – are you performing presentations or taking a more collaborative approach? Are your PMs actually business heads who have been asked to manage projects, so they are subject matter experts but haven’t formally managed projects. Or are you implementing a new project management structure to the business and working with experienced PMs? What are the templates you are introducing to the team? Are they based on any specific models and what software are you using? By pulling together these pieces of information and placing in a concise bullet point within your role remit, you will be greatly enhancing your CV and making it much easier for recruiters and hiring managers to really understand what your input is into this core area which is almost certainly always asked for in a job description.