Case study / Delivery record
Building a PMO from zero at an ANZ digital agency
As Head of Delivery and PMO, I built the operating system for an ANZ digital agency from zero. Shared playbooks, release gates and executive reporting cut time-to-market by 15% without adding bureaucracy.
- Head of Delivery ownership
- practice-wide playbooks
- release-readiness gates
- monthly and quarterly business reviews
- −15% agency time-to-market
01
Context
The agency had enterprise clients but no delivery function.
An early-stage agency with enterprise retail and consumer clients across Australia and New Zealand and no delivery function.
02
Challenge
Predictability had to arrive without bureaucracy.
Install predictability without bureaucracy, in a team that had never had a PMO and did not want one.
03
What I did
A small set of repeatable habits created one view of delivery health.
Wrote the playbooks, set the cadences, introduced release-readiness gates and DoR/DoD, built Jira and Confluence dashboards, standardised QBR/MBR reporting to founders and clients, scaled the team.
04
Outcome
The operating system cut agency time-to-market by 15%.
−15% time-to-market; one view of delivery health, risk and margin for founders and client executives.
05
What it taught me
A PMO is installed by example, not mandate.
A PMO is a set of habits, and habits are installed by example, not by mandate.
- 01
Delivery audit
- 02
Playbooks
- 03
Release gates
- 04
QBR/MBR
- 05
Scaled operation
Questions about this engagement
Frequently asked questions
What does building a PMO from zero involve?
Writing delivery playbooks, setting weekly and monthly cadences, introducing release-readiness gates and definitions of ready and done, maintaining RAID logs, building Jira and Confluence dashboards and standardising business reviews for founders and clients.
How do you introduce a PMO without adding bureaucracy?
Install a small set of habits by example rather than mandate: one shared view of delivery health, short fixed cadences and gates only where a release can fail. Remove anything nobody uses after a month.
What result did the PMO deliver?
Agency time-to-market fell by about 15 percent, and founders and client executives had one consistent view of delivery health, risk and margin.