#172 | PMO Trends for 2026: Reflections & Predictions – From Capability Clarity to Governance Simplicity

The pace of change has outgrown old PMO playbooks—so it’s time for a new one. In this future-focused episode, we unpack five key trends reshaping the PMO by 2026 and share practical ways to shift from performative reporting to real value delivery.

We explore what it means to reframe the PMO as a capability architect—moving the conversation from headcount to a heat-mapped view of people, process, tools, and decision flow. That simple shift helps expose gaps, justify investment, and prioritise work that actually reduces friction.

From there, we dive into the PMO’s evolving role as an AI custodian—setting guardrails, lifting data quality, and embedding just enough training to make AI both useful and safe. You'll hear real examples of where AI can save time right now, from summarising risks to drafting reports—without compromising trust or confidentiality.

We also look at how PMOs translate change into action using microchanges—small, focused wins delivered quickly to build trust and momentum—alongside their growing role as regulatory integrators coordinating risk, compliance, and delivery in increasingly complex environments.

And finally, we come back to simplification. From minimum viable governance to smarter intake and prioritisation, we offer a toolkit to help PMOs cut noise, clarify accountability, and deliver at the speed of strategy.

🎧 Whether you’re leading a PMO, working inside one, or rethinking the way your organisation delivers value—this episode offers a concrete playbook to help you get ahead of the curve.

Curious about our PMO Capability Workshops launching next year? Reach out to learn more—or share this episode with your team to kickstart the conversation.

In this episode, I cover: 

01:51 Global PMO Shifts and Conference Insights (The PMO Leader Global Conference)

04:18 This Years Anchor: Clarity and Capability

09:47 What Listeners Want: AI and Governance 

13:24 Poll Findings: Value Delivered As North Star 

30:30 PMOs As Capability Architects 

36:55 PMOs As AI Custodians

43:12 PMOs As Translators of Change

49:08 PMOs As Regulatory Integrators

And more...

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome And Purpose
• 1:51 Global PMO Shifts And Conference Insights
• 4:18 The Year’s Anchor: Clarity And Capability
• 9:47 What Listeners Want: AI, 2026, Governance
• 13:24 Poll Findings: Value Delivered As North Star
• 18:26 Industry Momentum And Community Milestones
• 22:01 Trends Recap: AI, ESG, Executive Alignment
• 27:36 Setting Up 2026: Five PMO Shifts
• 30:30 PMOs As Capability Architects
• 36:55 PMOs As AI Custodians
• 43:12 PMOs As Translators Of Change
• 49:08 PMOs As Regulatory Integrators

Transcript

Fatimah Abbouchi: 0:00

You're listening to Agile Ideas the Podcast, hosted by Fatima h Abbouchi. For anyone listening out there not having a good day, please know there is help out there. Let's just start by addressing the fact that PMOs are definitely changing and there is a lot of changes happening in the PMO space globally. And a lot of the changes in PMOs are evident as a result of some of the insights I'll share with you today, which have come off the back of a global virtual conference that my team and I held in October last uh last month that had about 1,500 or 1600 people join us globally. So I will be sharing insights from that directly from all regions and 30 countries, thousands of practitioners, executives, consultants, tech providers, and hopefully some of these insights will help you in your journey moving forward. The common thread this year is around clarity, capability, governance, and delivery. And all of these things tie back to the key word for today, and that is clarity. So again, welcome to everyone joining. Thank you. Let me know where you're from, and um we'll try to get through this and hopefully you'll get some really good insights from it. For those of you that don't know, I spend my time helping organizations close their execution gaps, capability, governance, and clarity, and that's what I'm going to be sharing a lot about today. Uh, we will be recording this session and it will be made available next week. Uh, so I'll send not only the recording, but you'll also get access to the detailed PMO Trends 2026 blog as well, which I um annually write and summarise all of the insights that I'm seeing through that. Um, the reason I can bring this to you today is my background, but also as a co-founder of the PMO leader community, where we've got a really large global um community of people that are sharing their insights and what they're seeing across the world as well. Today isn't just about PMO, it's a it's a reset because the world and where PMOs are today needs to change. Things are changing rapidly. You're going to hear that word that everybody's talking about at some point today, AI. Um, but our operating environment and the way that we are as PMOs and also stakeholders and supporters to the PMOs is actually changing. It's changed a lot in the last 18 months than I think it has in the last 18 years. And yes, AI is coming and it's already starting to rewrite playbooks and how things are operating. And there was a big emphasis on that. And when you registered, I asked what you wanted to hear about, and a lot of you talked about AI. So, as PMO leaders, we have the opportunity to decide how we move forward and how we uh respond as opposed to react to the future, and we'll do that, um, do that together today. So, you've told me through your um responses that you're hungry for three key things. So, one of them is how to integrate AI into real PMO work, so not theory, but more daily execution. You also asked about what PMO is going to look like for 2026, and then also how to simplify governance. So, I'm going to try to take you behind the scenes and give you some examples of that as well to help you understand what's actually happening in that landscape. Um, so again, thank you for joining me. It means a lot for me to have this uh with you here today. So, some of the questions you asked. One of the key themes of the conference last month was around minimum viable governance. We've probably all heard the term MVP, uh, but minimum viable governance was something that was discussed quite a lot in the conference, as well as resourcing capability. I had a question this morning from someone in the community asking how they help to justify the resources needed for their function with their CFO, as one example. And so balancing resource and capability is going to be key. And then also we're starting to see how changing uh changing pace around us is affecting the work that we do and the work we should stop doing as well. We ran some polls over the last four to six weeks on LinkedIn, and you can see from the poll questions and the highlighted green being the highest rated. Interestingly, um, some of these things here may not surprise you. One example of that that probably won't surprise you is that PMOs will primarily be seen as strategic partners. So the fourth uh box on the left side. Now we say that every year. I've been in this space for over 20 years and I hear that every year, and it has not changed and it'll continue to be the drive that we need. But also, in addition to being a strategic partner where we're focused on the executives, we also need to support our delivery teams so that we can help them unblock and help them to deliver more value. And so this goes to the bottom right corner where it talks about how should PMO success be measured in 2026? And 76% of respondents said value delivered. But what does value mean? It means different things to different people. So I have a question for you. If value delivered is the number one measure in PMO, then thinking about your teams or your functions, whether you're running a function yourself or you um employ people who do, or maybe you're an executive leader that runs uh PMO teams, what's one behavior that a PMO needs to stop doing to increase value? And think about it that from the perspective of your own personal situation. What could your PMO stop doing that will then actually drive value? So have a think about that um and we'll we'll continue to um elaborate on some of these as we go through as well. Lots of good progress. So every time I I host a webinar like this, I like to share and congratulate my peers in the industry because there's been so much good progress in the last 12 months alone. These are just very small snippets of what's happening in industry for those that aren't already in the know. Um, one of the really exciting things that we've um co-founded is the PMO Leader Mentoring Program. It's first of its kind. We have hundreds of mentors and mentees that are paired together to help progress, and it's a it's a free service that's been provided. We had our conference last year. You had the uh the PMO Global Alliance being acquired or partnered with PMI. There's a lot of things happening in the project management and agile alliance space. There's so much great work, and I have to say it's moving at an exceptional speed, and that's because of our um great colleagues that have been those that were before me, and some of you today, we're doing some really good things to really drive that moving forward. So, what did we say last year? So, if you've been following along, you know that we um constantly do a PMO trends blog every year, usually around October, November. And this year it coincided very nicely with the end of our global conference. And we talked about the trends for last year, and I really do feel that a lot of these things did progress. One of the really good examples of that is ESG. So, environmental and social governance. So, that aspect of ESG is become even more prominent with the recent acquisition by PMI of Green Project Management as an example. And I reference that because they are the biggest. There's been an influx of AI, and every PPM provider that I think I know of now that reaches out has got something new in terms of um AI integrations. Some of it is just a cover and not really much thought behind what is the integrations, but otherwise, there are some that are really going that extra mile. And so there's a lot of that really happening. So it's sort of deciphering what is actually going to add value for your teams and what things are maybe not yet matured enough. PMOs are re-establishing at executive level. I'm speaking to an executive this afternoon, and I've had about three conversations in the last month alone where executives are not really sure how their PMOs are driving their strategic objectives and the value for their strategy. So helping them to connect the dots between what the executives want and the PMOs is really important. And so that continues to be a recurring theme. So AI went mainstream, governance evolved, and I think one of the big um overarching trends is transformation. Continuously, it hasn't changed, and there's some fatigue starting to set in as well, and people are going to continuously be fatigued. So PMOs, we really have an opportunity to help uh support our stakeholders and our delivery to see the value of the things that are coming across us at a fast pace as well. The key theme of 2025 has been focusing on what's within your control and adapting faster than your environment. And doing that is going to help support all of the transformation agendas that your organizations that you work for have. So I'm keen to know, please feel free to put it into the chat. Is there anything here that actually surprises you? Um, or if you were in the PMO Trends discussion last year, was there anything there that stood out? Or maybe there's something on there that you think you have not heard of or seen and it hasn't really made waves. Um, so please, yeah, feel free to join in on the conversation in the chat as we move forward, we'll look into 2026. I am managing a couple of screens, so I am going to try to pay attention to your comments as we go as well. Um, and if there's any questions, I'll try to get to them throughout. So, 2026. What do we think is on the horizon? So, as I said, I could stand here and will sit here and sort of say it's this and it's that, but it's only one person's opinion. So instead, I've garnered insights from the global community through the conference and through numerous other avenues to understand what actually is trending when it comes to PMO and what I think maybe would be the major trends. That being said, we know PMO, depending on the organization and the maturity, can be quite complex and varies significantly. And so, unlike project management, which is a bit self-explanatory, PMOs vary very differently across organization and industry. So the trends today that we're going to cover are based on a few different um insights that I've that I've sort of gleaned. And there's five key ones that we're going to cover off. Each of these five PMO trends in no particular order reflect a shift from just activity to actually making um driving value. And also, as I mentioned earlier, it's not just about driving value for our executives. We all understand, um, and I was talking to someone about an hour ago actually, and we were debating why is it that the executives who fund often millions of dollars of projects don't really understand the role or the power of PMO. And that's often because it's not directly tied to their KPIs. And so there's a really good opportunity for PMOs to move from just being passive observers to strategy to more orchestrators. And some of you might already do that, and that's really great. So in 2026, when we think about the key themes and these five here, we'll go into them one by one. Again, you're going to see and hear me talk about clarity and maturity and then measured adaptability. Adaptive governance is something I've been living and breathing, and I will talk a little bit about that also shortly. So let's get into the first one together. So PMR is capability architects. Now, I know that some um some people might read the word architect and think I'm talking about IT, um, and I'm not, and I'm not suggesting there's any relation there. But when we think about it, it's it's about building the foundations, it's about not just thinking about not just thinking about what we often focus on is capacity and resourcing, but actually the capabilities needed for our organizations and our PMOs to succeed. I often find that in almost every conversation with any client, the one of the first probably top three things that people discuss with me is the lack of resources. We don't have enough resources, we don't have enough resources, we don't have enough resources. But the truth is, if you have clarity on the capabilities that you have in your organization and you have the right people in the right positions and the right processes and tools to support the capabilities that you uh employ in your teams, that's going to be more important than just continuously adding headcount. I had an executive discussion recently where I requested additional resources, and the first response usually is no, we don't have budget for that. But when you can actually show your capability map and show your executive or your sponsor what the capabilities you have and where your PMO itself is maybe stalled or held back because of these capability gaps, it makes it a lot more easier to justify resourcing. But first, to do that, you need to assess, map, and understand what it is that you're trying to uplift. So if you don't have that foundation, it makes it really, really difficult. We saw this theme a lot in the conference last month, and we found that, and even in the global awards, PMO awards that that's run by PMI, the strongest PMOs actually measure the capability, not just capacity. So we probably all know about resource management and workforce management and measure capacity, but do you actually measure capability? And the capability is the ability to do whatever it is that we're trying to do, not just about people's skills and people's capabilities, but your team, your organization, the programs and projects that we support. So doing so, as an actually one example I remember. So Matt, um Matt Dragen from Matt Tay reminded us that when we think about like change management as an example, um, one of the things that they're thinking about is that not only the capacity needed in BAU or operations when a program is going live, but actually the capabilities needed to sustain the change that is happening in an organization. It's very similar in PMOs. PMOs themselves can define not only when we're ready to deliver by understanding the capability landscape, but also what we want to deliver. And the stats speak for themselves. Um, you're more likely to achieve your goals when you map to strategic objectives. And the capabilities can be done that way as well. So define your capability maps, clarifying the roles, responsibilities, decision rights, governance, you'd be amazed how just fixing those sorts of things would really make a big difference. And then not thinking about resource planning purely as a head count, but actually about capabilities as well. And this is why PMO as capability architects is one of the key themes that I'm speaking about today. When we think about PMOs as well, if you don't have a clear capability map, don't worry, organizations, many organizations we speak to don't, but it's the fastest way to reduce friction and improve delivery. Because when you've got something visual that you can point to to talk to, it really helps executives, especially when you've sort of heat mapped it, to really understand where the gaps that you have are and also helps you to push back sometimes when maybe there isn't enough capacity to deliver or take on additional work. So thinking about how we can use concepts of architecture and capability together can really help and it will provide that clarity, which I mentioned is a key theme at the beginning. If you have any comments or thoughts on that, please do share it in the chat. I'm keen to hear it, even if I read them all later as well. So the second key theme is PMOs as AI custodians. Now, this one might get people a little bit offside. This isn't AI is not a PMO trend. I've just let me be clear on that. But the operating cadence and rhythm around it is AI is not just a tech change, um, it's a whole of business um transformation, usually. It may start in IT, but it really is needing um organizational functions, including PMOs, to use it, experiment with it. But more importantly, a big gap at the moment that I'm seeing is governance to support AI. And let me ground this with a quick example. So one of the really, really large clients we've been working with it recently, they went out and they introduced Microsoft Copilot. They rolled our Microsoft Co-Pilot across their organization, and then after a few months, it was gone. Nobody knew why. As we delve deeper and understood the reasoning behind it, is because the governance to support the AI use wasn't actually defined. It wasn't ready. So once again, just introducing a tool for tools' sake is not going to add any value. So then they brought in clarity, they defined some training, they introduced training into their learning management systems, they put in some guardrails to protect the company, and then adoption now is absolutely skyrocketed. And the activities associated with AI and the governance can really is a really big opportunity for PMIs to put their hand up and get involved, particularly if you're at an enterprise level, because you usually see these things on the horizon. So one of the other key things when it comes to AI is data. And if you're running a PMO that's leveraging PPM tools and other tools that hold a lot of data, you understand that data quality is absolutely essential. And so helping to frame up how we do governance better to support making sure that the right information is there to be used and integrated with AI is really important. And so again, I go back to clarity, then accountability, and obviously the oversight. So it's not just about tech. AI is coming, but without guardrails, it's going to be chaotic. It's already starting to be that way in a number of organizations. And so it's an opportunity for PMOs to step up and help to support balancing experimentation, innovation, but also driving accountability and governance as well. So knowing where AI fits within delivery, how delivery teams may use it, how they potentially could increase the way that they work and support eliminating some of those low, low-value activities may then increase the capacity for your delivery teams as well. And another thing is training. So we often find that PMOs and change management work together really well. And those teams might be involved in supporting the rollout of AI. So helping to actually be involved in that and helping to define training or provide input to trainings that would be better use, better use cases for delivery teams who you best understand could be really supportive. So AI custodians potentially, I kind of see that there will be an opportunity here. And this is predominantly because I feel that there isn't really a specific home for it anywhere else. And this is why I feel like as AI adoption grows, AI maybe becomes something that PMOs spend a bit more time in, and particularly with the expertise we bring around governance and accountability. So maybe this could be a competitive advantage if you're trying to. Maybe you're really efficient in a lot of other areas and you're looking for more innovative ways to grow your PMO. Well, this is one of the things I'm seeing some of those more mature PMOs do. So that was number two. Now, the third one is PMOs as translators of change. Now, I speak to a lot of change people. We had a huge emphasis on change management last year. We had a huge emphasis on change management in our conference last month. And people are starting to see that there is many organizations out there that are not getting change right. In the absence of change management practices and functions and maturity that change management professionals bring, where there is that gap, it's an opportunity for PMOs to step up and get involved. One of the skills that I wish I learned early in my career that is being invaluable for me is understanding change management. Because although PMOs are supporting change, they're not necessarily the change managers, but understanding the skills that change management brings is actually really important consistently because transformations are always on the horizon. So one of the things I talked about last year was micro change. So this is something we implore with a lot of clients where we will get them to think about a cadence, it might be a weekly cadence, and we introduce micro changes where we think of them as like really short, sharp mini projects as really clear scope, this is defined timeline, and you've got a dedicated squad team, if you like, and you're implementing microchange that then improves the outcomes for delivery stakeholders and better aligns what the organization is trying to achieve. Renee in our um conference last month, she's um was just recently the VP at one of the VPs at McDonald's. She talked about telling your story as well and thinking like a consultant. And so as a consultant, we would typically come in and identify some changes that an organization needs to make. We would then make recommendations for how to get there and then we'll help execute. You could do the same thing as your own PMO. That would be something that I think we could add a lot of value quite quickly, especially because a microchange can be done fairly quickly, and you can start seeing value going back to what we talked about earlier. So when we had one of our senior execs at our conference, Bashaki, she talked about starting where your stakeholders are, reducing fear and knowing when to act. So when we think about these things, it's about understanding what stakeholders actually need and then helping to derive the plan and plan of action to get us there. So it's a really good opportunity. Again, this is why this has come back into the themes this year. I really do feel like that change management is undervalued, underappreciated, and underestimated. I know PMOs were there maybe five years ago, and we're starting to change that. And I'm hoping that with some of the work PMOs and change can do together, we'll be able to translate more strategy into action, we'll be able to introduce more storytelling, and we'll be able to help executives understand the impact and value that some of these things can bring. And this is why I'm suggesting that PMO translators of change is a theme for this year as well. There are some there are many stats out there when it comes to this space. But one thing I can say is stats aside, in the circles that I am part of that relate to change management, there definitely is an appetite for change and PMOs to work together. Change, as I talk about often, managing stakeholders externally, externally to delivery and externally to an organization, and then also the PMOs working into delivery. And being the two together hand in glove can actually drive really great outcomes. So it's definitely an opportunity if you're thinking about capabilities and areas where you can grow, I would highly recommend you think about change. So this next one, uh, PMO as regulatory integrators. So the reason I'm mentioning this, so if you're if you're in Australia at the moment, you might have heard about the Australian Financial Services Licence or AFSL. There's a number of different um number of different governance regulations that are coming out that relates to the payments domain or financial services. And a lot of companies, not just banks, not just financial service companies themselves, do payments activities and payments work. So, as an example, there's going to be hundreds of companies that are needing to secure an AFSL license. Why is that relevant? It's one example that is where regulatory change, which we can't get around, actually meets an opportunity because when we think about regulatory change, people often think it's it's something that's only managed in the risk and compliance teams. But what I found in the last couple of years doing some of this work with clients is that it's a whole of business change, particularly when I talk about some of these recent reforms more locally. But the the things don't change when we talk about global as well, because there are definitely similar engagements where regulatory change is required and the PMOs can step up and actually take the lead and actually helping to coordinate and support this whole of business change by working with program managers, working with risk teams, working with compliance teams. I'll give you a real example. So supporting a really large major regulatory program of work for a large retailer. Initially, the thinking was this is compliance work, which means the assumption is that the regulatory work will be done in the risk and compliant teams. But as we sort of delve deeper, what we found is it's actually was much broader. So I've spent a lot like last large portion of the last couple of years helping an organization to map this regulatory change and integrate it into the organization. That's looking at how it affects HR, how it affects marketing, how it affects finance, how it affects treasury, how it affects the governance teams, how it affects delivery, and so forth and so forth. So connecting compliance, risk, transformation, and putting in really strong delivery foundations really, really can make a big difference. And so, although some organizations have dedicated PMOs that come in to support a regulatory program, depending on where you're sitting in the organization, it's you can use some of those same principles to really make sure that the regulatory change that's needed can be better managed, it has the right data insights, prioritise well, reporting is better, accountability is better. And really, I think this is one that with more and more regulation, particularly in Australia at the moment, I'm finding that there's a big opportunity here because someone needs to coordinate and manage all this. And who better than the PMOs? Um, and so I really do feel like this would be a good opportunity. Um, and this is why I think that it's uh an opportunity for PMOs to sort of delve into and also an opportunity for PMOs to help uplift organizational maturity because we need to get better so we can make sure that we're very able to support the new capabilities we have to bring in. And this is why I suggest that the regulatory integrator uh integrators as one of the themes. And then when I talk about this, um, some examples is embedding frameworks, it is coordinating with uh change teams in terms of what training might be required, it might be putting in document management foundations to support scaling of the governance associated with programs, it might be mapping the strategic objectives with the regulatory requirements, it might be a whole raft of new capabilities that need to be brought in to actually better help that organization manage that regulatory change and sustain it. That's a big gap I see in regulatory programs. We work so hard to deliver and meet the regulatory requirements of the government or the governance body, but then actually embedding it long term is a real big gap. So I think there's an opportunity there for PMOs as well. So that's probably the fourth one, and I again I'm keen to see how this is um balancing with your thoughts. And this is the fifth one. So as I talk you through this last of five, I'm keen to just understand if any one of the five resonated with you, and if there is one that you feel more strongly, have more strong affinity with. So please do let me know. Number five, and again, no particular order, is the PMOs are simplifiers of governance. I mentioned very early on at the top of this is minimum viable governance. It's not a new term, it's not something I created, but it really is something we need to consider. When we talk about, I'll give you a really good example actually. There's a large program of work that my team and I were managing recently. We had 35 stakeholder groups, not stakeholders, groups. So we were managing, and this relates to regulatory, but just to give you the context, we're talking about banks, we're talking about scheme partners, we're talking about industry regulators, we're talking about internal departments and functions within an organization, as well as tech partners. All of those 35 groups had to be coordinated, had to be aligned on what we were trying to deliver, how we were going to deliver it. And the outcome was we were able to do all of that with. One and a half FTE. That's right, a program management resource and support resource managed and coordinated 35 stakeholder groups through Clarity with a 90% PIR result from the whole program, internal and external stakeholders. You're probably thinking, well, how was that possible? It's possible because we had the right foundations. We had the minimum viable governance needed. We had removed all of the complexity. We set the right foundations early on. We also made sure we right-sized the governance that was needed for the organization based on their maturity at the time. A lot of mistakes that PMOs make, and I've made this many times in my past, is you go into an organization and you assume that what you did previously is going to work for this organization. And I can tell you that organizations that are large scale may have sometimes greater maturity. And if you try to bring that into a smaller organization, you will fail. Whereas if you have worked in smaller organizations and then you go and try to implement that in a large organization, the complexity is very chaotic and it becomes something that gets out of control quite easily. So you need to have just enough governance, which is where the minimum viable governance comes in. And you need to simplify your processes, and you should make sure that every single aspect of your governance is there as an enabler, not as something that restricts you. When I think about the key, the three key things that really worked for us when it comes to minimum viable governance, is we eliminated anything that was not adding value. And I'll give you a real example. We stopped doing certain reports to see if anyone noticed. And I talk about that a lot. And many people didn't notice. So what do you think happened? We eliminated them. We had very clear decision-making frameworks. So yes, we had a race here, we had our governance cadence, we had three levels of governance. We had your program level, we had your head of or general manager level, and we had your C level. Every single decision, risk, action, change, document, dependency, everything we did traversed to one of those three levels. What that meant was we could tailor the governance depending on the audience, because it's different audiences and different governance needs. And this is again going back to thinking about removing the complexity. And then in addition to that, we also made sure that our change in comms was as effective as we could make it by making sure people got the information they needed. And I'm not talking about reports. Reports was one of many of the things we did. We introduced drop-in opportunities where people can come along and ask questions. That is something that we made a standard. We made sure that we had pre-briefings before reports went out so that when we went to steering committees, when we went to board meetings, the relevant people had already briefed their executives. So we continued to drive that communication and change. So again, we thought about it, we strategically planned it, and we were able to get some significantly beneficial results. And so I'm all big in simplifying governance. I'm all big about adaptiveness and agility, not in terms of frameworks, methods, all of that, but in terms of agility and the speed and the responsiveness that we have. And also about making sure it's very clear what is your PMO doing that is needed for your organization at this point in time. Don't go into an organization and assume, make sure you take the time to speak to stakeholders to actually understand. So you can eliminate the introduction of overwhelm and bureaucracy and all those not fun things that happen. When you have clarity in place, everything else moves faster. And so this is why the fifth one is PMO simplifiers of governance. That is our job. Our job is to simplify governance. It's not to add complexity, it is not to just keep introducing it. If you're adding something, think about what you can remove. And so just to quickly recap us before I move into some um recommendations. I will remind you, we had first is PMOs capability architects. We had PMOs as AI custodians, PMOs as translators with change, PMOs as regulatory integrators, and PMOs as simplifiers of governance. Keen to know if there is any one of those, and I'll just bring them back up so you can quickly have a look. One, one, two, three, four, or five. What resonated the most? Um, and I'm very happy, thank you, AM, to uh Avijet to say all of them. Is there one of these that stood out to you the most? Or maybe was a surprise? Um feel free to add that into the chat. Okay, so let me take you how let me take you forward. Let's talk about bringing it all together. So translat, yes, translators of change. Translator change, yeah. It's so important. If we can get that right, um, one change management change management will be better because they'll be happier um and they'll get the the the um shared visibility that they deserve, but also maybe it'll help to um to grow that relationship further. So thinking about bringing it all together, um, I want you to think about something um while I'm explaining and sharing some some insights. Just to answer this question, take 20 seconds, write it down. If you had to remove one thing today from your PMO that would free up the most capability, what would that be? So take take 20 seconds and think about it. What could you remove that would free up the most capability? I'm really um challenge you to think about that. And there's got to be something, right? Because remember, simplification starts with subtracting things, not adding things. Sometimes we think we add more and more and more and more and more, but that doesn't actually um help. Simplifying things means removing things. So if your PMO wants to move faster in 2026, it's not about adding new frameworks and more processes. No, it's not about that. It's about removing friction. If you don't know where the friction is, go and ask your stakeholders, go and find out. The first couple of weeks, two, three, four weeks of any engagement I do is talking to people and listening to understand where the friction is. There's things that PMOs need to do when it comes to their own personal capabilities and the things that I think would really be supportive. Just some examples for you. So one of them would be adaptive governance. One of them is having some insight around what AI is actually doing and meaning, and just so you can have confidence to talk to it. Go play around with it, trial it, use Chat GPT, copilot some of these other tools. Um, understand your data, start to get like clarity if you're not already clear on what data you have available, make sure it's clean, because that's what the broader teams are going to use when we think about AI. And then also that change translation. So, how do you bring in, if you don't have the skills and capabilities of change management, how do you bring that in? How do you supplement your own skills and bring that in? So if you think about building capability and you want to future proof your PMO in 2026, think about those sort of three or four things because I think they'll be really supportive for you. So, my key message is um for 2026 practical, not performative. So, what this means is don't go build a PMO for the optics of it and also um don't do what many of us do. And I'll admit I've done this in the past early in my career, where we build a PMO based on our egos. Unfortunately, that's not going to work, it won't sustain you. You'll be one of those stats that keeps being thrown around. But build one that actually helps people to deliver. So if it doesn't move work forward, it is noise and remove it. And the way you'll know if it's noise is you will keep hearing people complaining about it. And you want to be the one that hears about it, as opposed to people talking about it and you not knowing. Truth and trust. Um, Renee spoke about this in the conference last month. Truth and trust means that you will build not only success in execution, but success in the trust that you'll get with your executives. Executives don't need 30-page glossy reports, although sometimes they demand it. They need the truth early. They need the, I need this information now, not just in case, but just in time. They need to know that the information you're providing them is built on trust. Stakeholder management is a process. It's it's not a process, sorry, um, it's everyday. Uh, Kathy, one of our um speakers last month said that. Stakeholder management isn't a process. People think of it as it's a process. No, it's something we have to do every day and embed in our work. And then clarity is the new capability. So clarity will outperform headcounts, tools, processes, any of that. If your people don't know who owns what, how decisions are made, where they find information, how they get stuff done, then nothing will actually move. So if you only leave today with one belief, think about the fact that PMOs don't fail because of lack of effort, because some of you are working more than ever before, but it's because they fail because of lack of clarity at the executive level. And they'll also fail because of lack of clarity in their stakeholder community, in their delivery teams that they're supporting. So they're my they're sort of my four key messages. And I also want to quickly share with you when PIMOs say to me, where do I start? I will say to you, start with capability clarity. If you don't know your readiness, you don't know your roadmap, you should have that, you should have visibility of that. Your teams need to understand it. And so here are some things to think about. When you think about PIMO, think of it as like an intelligence system, right? Think of it not as an admin function, although there is aspects of that. Think about it as the custodian of decision flow and adaptability and the one that understands the information and then disseminates that information first. Think about moving from just reporting to actually helping delivery teams to be better at what they do. If your PMO isn't running in that sort of cadence, then it will be replaced by a lot of AI and also replaced by one that is more effective. So it's not about embedding new information, it's about reframing and reshaping the identity that your PMO brings. And the way that you do that is by getting more stakeholders on site. Doing less, but doing it better. That's essential. So here's some steps that I will um talk you through to the leap to help you move forward. Um these are things that I would literally be doing, and I have done and will continue to do. So mapping your current capabilities. Again, people will assume capability means the people's skills and the people's capabilities. I'm not just talking about that. I'm actually talking about people, process, tools, including technology. So you need to map your current capabilities and understand where your strengths are, not just for you, but for the teams that you'll support in your organization. You will also understand the gaps. By having those conversations, what it will enable you to do is actually go through a process where you can identify the gaps that you have and then work out how you eliminate them. You might identify this, you define your capabilities, and then you start thinking about those microprojects that I mentioned earlier. But also, as you're going through the process, you might find that there's a gap because there's a decision bottleneck. I'll give you an example of that. So one organization in the manufacturing space that I was working with in recent years, they uh had a had a view that they had full oversight of all of their projects. Little to their surprise or to the managing director's surprise, they actually didn't. So they only had a few million dollars budget, but they had over 96 projects running when we did a little bit of a uh project amnesty and actually went and sourced that information. But what was happening was because the decision making um process wasn't clear around the intake process of new ideas and getting them validated and approved and funded, operational teams in the business just went away and started introducing new projects after projects after projects after projects. And then what happened is as they started to introduce uh PMO, the PMO itself started realizing that it was going to be near impossible to put in some foundations to improve and uplift project management because there was no decision, um, there wasn't no decision authority or decision-making capability around how projects would be identified, mapped, etc. So the first thing they started with above anything else was about defining and managing and refining a demand and pipeline process that they they then they got all of the functions in the organization, so all of your equivalent GM or heads of to actually support and be part of. That made such a significant difference, and they would not have known that if they didn't take the time to start mapping their capabilities. Second one, simplifying one governance process. So this is where you can remove friction. I'll give you another example. So working with an energy company, they were spending, their product managers were spending an inordinate amount of time, or product owners rather, an inordinate amount of time going out to individual stakeholder or stakeholder groups and presenting what their the product maps were, what they were thinking of designing, um, how they were planning on delivering, and getting feedback from that. When we added up how much effort that was taking, on average, it was about 20 to 20 to 30 hours per product owner just to do that exercise. So we flipped the switch, we seeked feedback from our stakeholders, and what we did is we put in a two-hour placeholder and a certain cadence where the product owners could then each take in terms to present that information out to the stakeholder groups collectively. That eliminated over 20 hours of work for them per month. And so that was a significant way to remove friction for the product owners who were then able to deliver more. This is a really simple example, but it really makes it real and it's based on practice, not just theory. Clarifying roles and responsibilities. You would be amazed at how many clientele that we've worked with over the last 10 years, whose one of the biggest deliverables they ask for is a racy. And for those that don't know what a racy is, um, responsible, accountable, sometimes there's an S supporter, consultant, informed. Just defining the racy can make a significant difference. I've got a client that we've been working with recently who has people with similar role titles. So they're very confused in this organization at the moment, and that the HR conversation with me is we've got people that have similar role titles, and so they don't know where their role starts, and that role stops. There's confusion simply just because of role titles. Now they're not going to go and change the role titles as they've just gone through a whole restructure, but instead, what they're going to do is they're going to build a racing, and actually, we're going to map out throughout the teams where the basically the value chain of work is across those areas. And then we'll map the roles and responsibilities and the people and the role, and it will make a lot a lot clearer. So that's that's another um one to think about. The fourth one, exploring safe AI opportunities. So when I say safe, I'm talking about one of the biggest things companies care about the most is that you're not sharing sensitive data or any data, in fact, that relates to your environment or the business you're in. Um same in my business. I don't want my teams sharing data about our business or any clients outside of our business. So doing that into say a public tool is not the right path. And that's why to make sure it's safe, organizations are starting to put in guardrails. And there's some really good actually guardrails that have been rolled out by the government. Um, I can't remember the title of it, but if anyone wants it, let me know and I can look it up. And also, Atlassian's released something really um, really smart around responsible AI. But organizations are starting to do that. So you want to make sure you're using um AI within the responsible guardrails of your organization. But simple things might be um automating reporting or report highlights, it might be creating um outlines for uh uh stakeholder packs, it might be um, for example, streamlining um streamlining the mapping of gaps that you've identified once you've gone through that exercise in step one. Just small things like that can really save you a lot of time. Number five, resetting your prioritization lens. So as I said, um I gave an example earlier, out of every single engagement, probably about 30 different clients over the last however many years, the number one, number one without fail, doesn't matter what the requirement is, is all around pipeline management, demand, intake process, prioritization. And this is why a lot of PPM providers actually spend such a significant amount of time refining that part of their platform. That and resource management are two of the most common ones. And so this is really, really important. And then the last one is creating a 30, 60, 90-day uplift plan. Small incremental actions. One of the things that's really prominent in agile ways of working is actually to go through a process where you may have, you know, six 90-day increments or a 30-day sprint, whatever works for your organization's size and scale, but start to introduce some things, get stakeholder input through the process. And these are things that you can do with absolutely zero budget. You don't need any money to do this, you don't need no more resources. You can do it without permission. It's small steps that will then make um a great down in the clarity that you need that will then drive capability shifts. And so they would be some of the things that I would highly recommend that you could start with today. There is a uh podcast I wrote, I launched two days, sorry, a podcast episode a couple of weeks ago, I think. The team can share it with you around capability, um, capability gaps and and um what to do in that space that I think could help, give you some more context and also capability in terms of delivery, or you can just find it um on the Agile Ideas podcast. Now, if you've heard me say all these things and you thought, oh, maybe I need help, of course, I'm gonna leave you with this. So if you're thinking um you've gone tried, attempted some of the steps mentioned, maybe your organization's new, maybe it's immature, maybe it's too complicated. Um, I am launching the PMO capability workshops, which we will be doing next year. We've developed our capability in a box model, and we've got these really cool cards, and we've got persona mappings and governance pathways, and all these amazing things. And it's really perfect for organizations that want clarity, don't know where to start perhaps, want something that's fast, practical. Typically, these are run usually in one day or two days, and if it's online remotely, then it's run for teams over a period of weeks. But it will help you diagnose where your execution gaps are and also map it to industry standards so we can kind of give you insights for your industry and then give you a blueprint for your capabilities, so your capability map, and then a 90-day plan to actually take straight to leaders and say, like, this is my roadmap, and that might include um opportunities for you to request resources if you're trying to grow and scale your PMO. So nothing big, no big engagement, no fancy anything, but it might be something that could be valuable for you. So if you're interested in something like that, just um reach out to me or any of the team, and we're um very happy to do that and help you. Now we are at the end of our meetup. Um, there's been a lot of information. What I will say is we will share the recording of this next week. There's also a full detailed PMO Trends blog that will be released next week. You'll also get that because you've registered today. And I want to leave you with uh a key message, and that is remember to focus on what's within your control, um, adapt faster than your environment. I know that sounds a bit crazy, but we need to do that so we're not replaced. And then also lead with clarity. Those key three things, if you take anything from today, are really essential, and they'll be the building box to really help you move forward. Um, these lines came up repeatedly during our 2025 conference, um, and the videos for that are all online on YouTube as well, but it really captures for me what 2026 is about. Remember, clarity isn't about like removing necessarily and not having any complexity because there will be lots of that, but actually really the mastery of it. And so if anything from today resonated, I'm I implore you to please share the video once it's out, share the blog, um, and reach out to me if you've got any um questions, comments, and yeah, I'd love to help you out if you need anything. But otherwise, thank you. Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or write it if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things Agile Ideas. Go to our website at www.agilemanagementoffice.com. I hope you've been able to learn, feel, or be inspired today. Until next time, what's your Agile Idea?