Chinwe Nnadi
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SaaS · Operations

Global PMO — $21M across 90 institutions.

A programme management office built from scratch to govern $21M in enterprise implementations across 90 institutions — bringing structure, visibility, and delivery discipline to a portfolio that had none.

SectorSaaS / EdTech
Portfolio$21M
Institutions90
Role0→1 PMO Build

The situation

The organisation was running enterprise implementations across 90 institutions with no centralised programme management. Projects were tracked in isolation, dependencies were invisible, budgets were managed per-team rather than per-portfolio, and leadership had no single source of truth on delivery health. $21M was in motion with no unified governance.

The diagnosis

The issue wasn't the teams — they were capable. The issue was the absence of a connective layer. Without a PMO, there was no portfolio view, no risk aggregation, no resource conflict resolution, and no consistent reporting. Every institution was an island, and the portfolio was the sum of its islands rather than a governed whole.

What I built

The PMO from scratch

I built the programme management office from zero — defining its charter, operating model, reporting cadence, and governance gates. The PMO became the single accountable body for portfolio health, risk, and delivery across all 90 institutions.

  • Portfolio governance — a single framework for prioritisation, funding, and stage-gate reviews across $21M
  • Standardised reporting — consistent status, risk, and financial reporting across all institutions
  • Resource management — cross-institution visibility into capacity, conflicts, and bottlenecks
  • Risk aggregation — portfolio-level risk visibility rather than siloed project risk registers

Delivery discipline

I introduced delivery discipline that scaled — milestone tracking, dependency mapping, and a weekly portfolio review that turned status data into decisions. The PMO didn't just report; it drove corrective action.

Ninety institutions went from unconnected projects to a governed $21M portfolio — in one build.

$21M

portfolio governed under the PMO

90

institutions brought under unified governance

0→1

PMO built from scratch

1

single source of truth for delivery health

What made it work

The PMO worked because it was built to govern, not just to report. Reporting without authority is decoration. The PMO had the charter, the cadence, and the data to actually move the portfolio — reprioritising, reallocating, and escalating when delivery was at risk.

Building from zero meant the governance model could be designed for the portfolio's actual shape, not retrofitted onto inherited structures that no longer fit.