Agile PMO Principles: How Communication Turns Ideas into Value
What does an “Agile PMO” actually mean in practice? In this edition of Meeting Notes, I share the quiet principles behind effective delivery — why communication matters more than tools, why clarity reduces cost, and how teams move work from idea to value without the illusion of control.
Hey,
I hope you’re safe and well.
This is the final Meeting Notes before the New Year — I’ll be back in 2026.
I hope you enjoy the festive break and get time with the people who matter most.
“Agile” PMO Principles
Long-time readers will know I rarely use the word Agile. It carries too much baggage. And yet, not a month goes by where I’m not asked about an “Agile PMO”.
Just last week I spent a day helping a Project Manager design exactly that.
At the heart of what people call an Agile PMO is something much simpler:
The ability to respond intelligently to information.
Which raises an awkward question: Shouldn’t any PMO be doing that?
But hey, let's crack on with some of the principles we worked through together.
1. Communication is the work
Every system follows the same pattern:
Idea → Work → Value
Between the idea and the value is communication.
That space — the meetings, conversations, clarifications, tensions, decisions — is where cost accumulates if communication is ineffective. This is why I say 99% of problems in an organisation are due to ineffective communication.
Ineffective communication creates cost – because everything inside the organisation, between the idea and value realised, is cost.
This is why managing cost by spreadsheets alone never works.
The fastest way to reduce the costs involved in releasing value, is to improve communication, so you can go from idea to value smoothly and quickly.
Effective communication aims to achieve clarity, alignment and momentum:
- Clarity over what we’re creating.
- Clarity over who is doing what.
- Clarity over risks, dependencies, and decisions.
- Clarity over the value we're chasing.
And then alignment around this clarity.
Clarity creates alignment.
Alignment creates momentum.
Momentum creates value.
Project management is not charts and tools. It is alignment, so the right actions happen — and alignment is built through effective communication. A good PMO is always cultivating their communication behaviours.
A practical, science backed, workbook for strengthening the communication behaviours that make work clearer, calmer, and more effective.
2. Be explicit about value
Most teams cannot clearly answer this question:
What kind of value are we actually chasing?
There are four types I cover in the idea to value course:
- Financial value — something customers will pay for — keeps the organisation alive
- Cost reduction — removing internal waste — keeps the organisation efficient
- Enablement — doing work like compliance and legal — keeps the organisation operating
- Experiments — staying competitive over time — keeps the organisation learning
All four are valid. Problems arise when they are mixed together and never named, or people have no idea what they are chasing (way more common than you may think).
A good PMO keeps value visible and the main focus — and keeps cost proportional to it.
3. Design for feedback
Good project management is the art of feedback.
Short loops. Useful signals. Insights that inform decisions. Data that can be trusted.
The simplest question to start with is this:
What should I know right now, that I don’t?
Then design feedback loops that answer it — without overwhelming the system (or people).
This is where “Agile” earns its name. Not through ceremonies or tooling, but through learning from feedback.
4. Tell the truth early
Watermelon reporting — green on the outside, red on the inside — destroys trust.
Small evasions of the truth today create large crises later.
The truth may be uncomfortable, scary even, but it creates options for decision making and pivots. Silence, or misinformation, removes them.
Short feedback loops make truth easier and quicker to surface — and easier to act on.
5. Replace blame with curiosity
Delays, mistakes, missed deadlines — these are not failures. They are signals. And they are inevitable as people do creative action to turn an idea into value.
A good PMO asks why, not who.
Blame distorts the system and people’s behaviours. Curiosity improves it. Learning helps everyone succeed, and value arrive sooner.
6. Don’t confuse the map for the territory
Project Management tools are feature rich now and highly efficient, but they are maps of the work. They are not the work itself.
It is people who do the work.
When the map becomes more real than the territory, the illusion of control sets in — and value quietly slips away.
The role of a PMO is not to perfect the map, or fiddle with numbers, but to shape the conditions, climate and territory in which value can emerge.
7. Choose people over headcount
People are the engine of success.
I’ve seen small, well-chosen teams outperform much larger groups by orders of magnitude.
Great teams communicate well. They understand the business. They elevate each other.
That is where value comes from.
In large organisations, people are often reduced to numbers on a spreadsheet. Cost replaces ability as the decision lens. But value doesn’t come from headcount — it comes from people who can think together, work together, and communicate clearly.
Closing Out
An “Agile PMO” is not a framework, a toolset, or a label.
It is a posture and set of behaviours.
This posture is a commitment to clarity over certainty.
Alignment of people over tooling. Truth over comfort. Learning over control.
And above all, a belief that communication is not overhead, fluffy or nice to have — it is the actual work that turns ideas into value.
Go deeper into the craft of delivering value with the Idea → Value System — choose the workbook alone or the full workbook + video course for a richer learning journey.
From the Studio (Behind the scenes)
I’m still nudging The Squirrel book along. It’s harder to write than I imagined — but it is moving. It helps that there’s a friendly family of squirrels living in the trees behind the studio. I watch them run the fence most days, occasionally taking shortcuts across the studio roof, which is… impressively noisy.
On meditating about management —
I recently published a completely free book called Meditations on Management. Every few years I do a kind of wintering of my digital writing — a quiet folder where half-written thoughts, abandoned chapters, and unfinished ideas idle away waiting for their time to shine.
When I return to them, I’m always surprised. With a little care, a bit of editing, and a thread to pull on, much of that quiet work is ready to shine and meet the world. Meditations on Management is a collection of that writing — and it holds up.
On carrying things between the house and the studio —
This week on the Creative Soul Projects channel, I shared a short film about my everyday carry between the house and the studio. No surprises: plenty of notebooks, pens, and the tools that quietly support thinking.
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Until 2026.
Take care of yourself and others.
Rob..
