Is Your PMO A Cost Centre or Value Generator?
About this webinar
A PMO can get better at delivery and still become harder to justify. David Dunning’s warning is that as a PMO grows, its cost grows too, while the efficiency and effectiveness case eventually runs out of room. This webinar is about what comes next.
The progression
- Widen the remit. David’s Business Integrated Governance takes the PMO’s remit beyond project efficiency into portfolio value, resource choices, business-as-usual and product work, and ultimately the connection between organisational goals and activity, with a more senior sponsor at each step.
- Change in a deliberate order. Alexander David starts with a case for change built around what each managing director would gain, then works in 90-day sprints: strategic portfolio management first, project and programme controls next, tools last.
- Put the business into the choice. PMO leader Annette Smith describes using TransparentChoice as her IT PMO moved from cherry-picking and squeaky-wheel demand to a more explicit project prioritisation process, with the business involved in assessment and her CTO as executive sponsor. A business that once questioned why the PMO existed now seeks out its help.
Dan Dures then uses TransparentChoice screens to illustrate the same progression, from portfolio visibility and explicit definitions of value into project selection, resource choices and sequencing. The panel’s measurement point is equally practical: lead with business outcomes, while still using project measures as useful operational or leading indicators.
What you’ll take away
- Why a PMO’s efficiency case eventually hits a ceiling
- How David widens the PMO remit, with a more senior sponsor at each step
- Why Alexander puts strategic portfolio management before controls and tools
- What Annette’s experience shows about moving project choice back toward the business
- How to approach executives with insight, options and decisions rather than more reporting
Research in context
78% of the senior leaders surveyed said strategic alignment should receive high or top priority when PMO resources are allocated.
That finding comes from PMI’s 2026 report, based on its 2025 Global PMO Survey of 1,905 PMO leaders and senior leaders. For the senior leaders surveyed, strategic alignment was already part of what they expected the PMO to prioritise.
That answers David’s question about whether the business wants a more strategic PMO. The harder question is how to make that role credible. Alexander offers a change sequence; Annette Smith, an IT PMO leader who joins the discussion to share her own experience, shows what that looked like when the business became involved in prioritising work.
How this connects to TransparentChoice
Annette’s story and Dan’s software segment point to the same job: help leadership make the choice, rather than make it for them.
- Make judgement explicit. Structure leadership priorities through weighted criteria and bring in assessments from the people who understand the relevant initiatives.
- Test what actually fits. Apply funding, capacity and other constraints and compare feasible portfolio alternatives.
- Re-run the choice when something changes. Change a priority, assessment, constraint or assumption and see what becomes included, excluded or displaced.
TransparentChoice supports that decision process. Leadership still decides what to fund, continue, change, defer or stop.
Learn more
Join the next live webinar
Go deeper on integrated governance and prioritisation
David Dunning goes further into how Business Integrated Governance connects definitions of value, systematic prioritisation, resource choices and accountability. Watch: From Driving Your Backlog to Driving Your Strategy.
Design your PMO’s mandate around business value
Dr Tony Prensa tackles the operating-model question: learn the business, co-create the PMO’s role and distinguish business outcomes from PMO measures. Watch: Building a High-Impact PMO.
Turn priorities into a real resource choice
Dirk Withake and Stuart Easton take the argument into the decision room: when capacity is already committed and another priority arrives, leadership has to decide what gives way. Watch: Bridging the Strategy–Execution Gap.
See business-led prioritisation in a PMO case
The Harbor Foods case shows business leaders setting criteria and assessing an accumulated project backlog, a documented version of the journey Annette describes. Read: Harbor Foods PMO case study.
Speakers
Alexander David is a strategic portfolio management and PMO leader with extensive experience in driving transformation, carve-outs, and change leadership. As CEO of Value Matrix, he helps organizations achieve operational excellence and sustainable growth through strategic planning, organizational transformation, and digital innovation.
David Dunning is a Business Integrated Governance thought leader and founder of the Business Integrated Governance CIC and Deep Team. He also serves as Chairman of CPS, helping organizations improve strategy delivery, governance, and business agility.
Dan Dures is VP of Customer Success at TransparentChoice. With senior leadership experience at Just Eat, dunnhumby, and Home Retail Group, he brings expertise in data, strategy, and customer insight. He helps PMO leaders focus on projects that deliver real strategic value.
Stuart Easton is Founder & CEO of TransparentChoice. He works with leaders and portfolio teams on decisions about which investments and initiatives to fund, continue, change, defer or stop when priorities compete for limited funding and capacity. His work combines structured decision-making with practical portfolio choices.