Tecknuovo: Building a PMO from zero to govern 19 projects, including public-sector delivery

Nine months, in our experience. At Tecknuovo, a consultancy, we stood up a centralised Portfolio Management Office from nothing and had it governing 19 projects, including public-sector delivery for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. The work ran in parallel. We implemented portfolio frameworks for tracking and managing delivery while we oversaw the live portfolio, so nothing was designed on paper and switched on later. By the end Tecknuovo had a fully functional PMO with real visibility and control, and a junior delivery team markedly more capable than when we arrived.

We built Tecknuovo a Portfolio Management Office from zero and ran it for nine months. Tecknuovo is a consultancy. It needed centralised oversight of 19 diverse projects, including critical public-sector engagements for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water, and it wanted its junior staff upskilled in best practice. We implemented the portfolio frameworks for tracking and managing delivery, oversaw the live portfolio, and coached junior team members in portfolio management and agile delivery. Tecknuovo came out of it with a fully functional PMO and real visibility and control. Its junior delivery team was markedly more capable, and its credibility on high-profile public-sector work was reinforced.

Tecknuovo is one. It is a consultancy, and it brought us in to build the Portfolio Management Office that governed its own 19-project portfolio, including public-sector delivery for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. A consultancy is a demanding client for delivery work, because delivery is what it sells. The engagement had to give its leadership real visibility and control and leave its junior delivery leads markedly more capable. Over nine months it did both. If your firm sells delivery and needs its own house in order, that is a problem we have solved before.

At portfolio level, yes. Tecknuovo is a consultancy delivering into the public sector, and we built and ran the Portfolio Management Office that governed a 19-project portfolio taking in HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. Our role was governance and oversight. We owned the frameworks and the tracking that kept high-profile public-sector work visible and well run, and Tecknuovo's own teams delivered the projects. The outcome reinforced Tecknuovo's credibility on that work. It is portfolio delivery, and it is the record we point at when a buyer asks about public sector experience.

Nineteen at Tecknuovo, all governed by one centralised PMO. It was a diverse book, and it included critical public-sector engagements for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. What makes that scale workable is the framework, not headcount. One consistent way of tracking and managing delivery across the whole portfolio means leadership can see what is being built, who owns it and how it is going, in one place instead of nineteen. The real test is not how many projects the office touches. It is whether leadership gets real visibility and control, and Tecknuovo did.

Yes, and live is where coaching sticks. At Tecknuovo we provided hands-on coaching in portfolio management and agile delivery to junior team members while overseeing the live 19-project portfolio, so people learned on the work they were actually accountable for rather than in a classroom. Over nine months that produced a markedly more capable junior delivery team, which was one of the two things Tecknuovo hired us for in the first place. Building up the client's own people is standard for us. It is how an engagement ends without leaving a dependency behind.

Your people, if the engagement was set up honestly. At Tecknuovo the deliverable was not just a functioning Portfolio Management Office. It was also a junior delivery team coached in portfolio management and agile delivery while the live portfolio ran, so the capability stayed in the building when the engagement ended. That is our standard shape: the exit date is agreed at kickoff, the client owns all work product, and skill transfer is written in as a deliverable. A PMO that only works while the consultancy is in the room is a subscription, not a function.

Keep a standing register of four things: what is being built, who owns it, what it was permitted to do, and what happened when it was reviewed. That is the function underneath the PMO we built for Tecknuovo, implemented as portfolio frameworks for tracking and managing delivery across a 19-project portfolio. Everything else a PMO produces derives from that register. There is a simple test for whether yours tracks the right things. Does leadership have real visibility and control, or just reporting?

It does, because the hard part is the function, not the subject matter. A portfolio office keeps a standing register of what is being built, who owns it, what it was permitted to do and what happened when it was reviewed, and it holds that record current while the work runs rather than assembling it afterwards. Tenhaw built and ran that function at Tecknuovo across a 19-project portfolio spanning HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water, and upskilled the junior delivery team while it ran. A programme that cannot answer those four questions on any given week is not governed, whatever it is building.

No. At Tecknuovo the coaching was the delivery. Junior team members were coached in portfolio management and agile delivery on the portfolio itself, while we oversaw the live 19-project portfolio, critical public-sector work included. Nothing paused for training. The portfolio kept moving for the full nine months and the coaching rode on it. Tecknuovo got both outcomes at once, a fully functional PMO with real visibility and control and a markedly more capable junior delivery team. That is why coaching on live work beats sending people on a course.

It did at Tecknuovo, where reinforced credibility on high-profile public-sector work is one of the three outcomes the study records. The portfolio we governed included delivery for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water. Buyers of that kind will not take assurance on trust. They want to see how a supplier tracks work and who owns each project, down to what happened at the last review. A centralised Portfolio Management Office produces that evidence as a by-product of running the portfolio properly, so it is already there when someone asks. Credibility of that sort follows the evidence rather than the pitch.

Yes. Let the public-sector work set it. Tecknuovo's book of 19 was a diverse one. Engagements delivering to HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water sat alongside the rest of the portfolio, and the office we built governed all of it under the same frameworks. Running two standards is where portfolio offices come undone, because every project that moves between them has to be translated and leadership stops comparing like with like. Hold the whole book to what your most scrutinised client expects, and everything else inherits it at no extra cost.

Often not, and it is cheaper to hear that now. The function you actually need is a current register of what is being built and who owns it, and with a handful of projects one person can hold that in a single document and a weekly conversation. At that size a separate office adds reporting without adding much control. Tecknuovo's position was different: a book of 19 diverse projects, including delivery for HMRC, the MOD and Thames Water, is well past the point where anyone carries the picture in their head. That is why it needed a centralised Portfolio Management Office, and why building one was nine months of work.

Build it on the work they are already doing. At Tecknuovo we implemented the portfolio frameworks while overseeing the live portfolio, so there was never a launch day when nineteen projects were told to switch to something designed elsewhere. The people who would run the office afterwards, Tecknuovo's junior delivery leads, were coached in portfolio management and agile delivery inside it while it took shape, which gave the office advocates on the ground before it had any authority. An office designed on paper and handed over finished gets treated as head office reporting. One that grew out of the portfolio gets used.