Chicago leaders from PMO and IT organizations gathered to share and discuss trends, best practices and lessons learned in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Over 35 people, representing 25 different organizations, gathered on March 25 to share their learnings on readiness response, the abrupt shift to remote working, and the various collaboration tools used to continue their organizations’ business.
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Centric Consulting’s Jim McCarthy, Amy McJoynt, Mark Buchynski and Erica Camiliere convened a special “Virtual 3 p.m. Town Hall” to discuss a number of the items and issues everyone is facing. The mission of the meeting series is to construct a place where people can benefit from learning from others, share sound advice and collaborate with a community of friends.
For this meeting, the combined experience of the attendees resulted in a rich dialogue as the group covered readiness planning, crisis response, remote workforce preparation and execution, collaboration tools, and safeguarding employees while continuing to serve clients and keeping operations going. They also discussed the ability to reuse business continuity and Disaster Recovery plans, the increased demand for a remote workforce through laptop allocation and desktop services support, and the importance of ongoing communication.
Ultimately, five main themes came together:
- What is the role of the PMO in crisis response, and what will that look like going forward?
- What is our restart protocol to come? How do we ramp up or ramp down to go back to “normal” operations?
- How do we keep our teams engaged and productive, including ongoing and regular communication?
- What lessons have we learned from responding to these volatile times?
- How will this shape and change our work in the future?
Overall, the gathering was a success, and hopefully provided attendees with thoughts for the future as we continue navigating life associated with the coronavirus, along with our eventual transition back to “normal.”