Question

Describe best practices in project and project portfolio management. Why should an organization implement such practices?

Provide an example from your organization or one with which you are familiar,

describing successful best practices and why their outcomes were successful.

Answer 1

Start with a Project Management Office

At the root of your project portfolio management efforts is the PMO. A business unit that regulates portfolio management, efforts from across the organization both begin and culminate here. While certain organizations may not consciously have a PMO establishment defined, organizations, both big or small, generally have a confluence of managerial talent coming together in different ways.

To step back, in an event that your program or portfolio is not wide enough for it to require a PMO, you may choose to oversee the functions of your project and your process through an informal setup, that nonetheless covers complexities with the degree of required detail. Conversely, larger organizations are beginning to establish Enterprise PMOs (EPMO) which act as the anchor of multiple, smaller or niche PMOs.

Before implementing your PPM tool across multiple dimensions, it is critical that you evaluate the structure of its existence from the standpoint of the PMO itself. For such efforts to take off efficiently, C-suite and executive managers need to be involved in the process and a comprehensive stakeholder buy-in can do you more favours than you’d imagine.

However, such transparency can evolve and extend on a large-scale basis as noted in PwC’s Global PPM Survey here when the relationship between executive teams and the program delivery teams is a well-nurtured one. Your delivery outcomes stand a chance to be at their best when you can really establish a co-operative and involved buy-in from the higher management. The PMO streamlines this from the get-go.

Align right

Aligning your business and strategic components generally involves being crystal clear about your goals and objectives. Unfortunately, as expansion becomes the core motive, these objectives get lost in translation and over time you will see that your portfolio is suffering from such consequences.

Further, besides the organization, you need to evaluate every project on a list of core aims and goals so that you understand how close it takes you to your business’s vision. Each project you add to the portfolio is a part of the whole picture!

Alignment also comes as a set process with portfolio prioritization. In fact, your portfolio has only room for the best. And added to this, is the pressure of having to efficiently manage change and ensure that the portfolio is an alchemy of latest technology and time-tested principles. Therefore, industry leaders recommend having the different streams of portfolios separated from the very beginning. This is way, your high-networth clients are placed with the likes of their own and a designated team handles their needs. And a different project team can work on the rest of the commitments you have.  

Measure constantly

Once the PPM unit has a full-fledged establishment, you will need to define the criteria on which you evaluate performance and other essential parameters. This will let you monitor your KPIs as well as let you replicate the success of high performers. In addition, you can also reinvent things, as and when required, to improve slower areas. To again draw back from PwC’s Global PPM Survey, besides progress, risks and pain points have to be tracked too in order to accommodate changes.

For example, measurement and reviews in an agile culture are often prescribed as a part of the ongoing process. It tries to accommodate learning as well as new developments in parallel to project progress. While real-time changes may not be possible with a portfolio that is too extensive in nature, reviews no longer need to be unidimensional processes left for the latter half.

Besides, measuring progress goes hand in hand with change management, which as per digital project management standards, is the holy grail for sustained growth itself. At the end of the day, it is common knowledge that what you measure certainly grows. Measurement also lets you put intangible data into tangible, shareable formats. Your PMOs can exchange notes from here on, and make departmental learnings universal.

Assess comprehensive risk potential

Risk evaluation and assessment, are integral to every step in the PPM process. A risk management strategy is an interdependent one as far as your portfolio is concerned. When it comes to risk evaluation and management, you will have to formulate an organizational plan as well as a project-to-project one.

Each project’s risk potential needs an overall evaluation, both in the context of its own outcomes, as well as the damage it is likely to cause to the others in the portfolio. For example, Project Z’s capital-intensive requirements may leave the resource quality of Project Y in jeopardy in an event that its profitability gets lowered. So if the organization chooses to invest in Project Z nonetheless, the risk contingency plan for Project Y may potentially be stronger given the chances of lowered resource quality. In addition, the managers in charge will need to exchange notes on how they are well within permissible risk standards that they are allowed to take for the projects in the portfolio.

As a part of the execution policy, risk evaluation and assessment need to be ongoing processes with stakeholders involved in every new development. This way, when new areas of obscurity arise, you can evaluate the ripple effects that they create and step back when the risks seem unwarranted.

Invest in technology

PPM thrives on organization-wide visibility and the bandwidth to take quick, calculated decisions. Remember that your financial decisions, the commitments of your resources as well as your client deliverables are no longer one-time efforts that can be managed on spreadsheets or homegrown tools.

They are each interdependent as well as make for the foundation of the next set of tasks that have been scheduled. Separate inventories that map the efforts of projects as well as their outcomes, in addition to a dedicated resource skill inventory, are all no longer prescribed best practices but are critical must-haves.

PPM tools essential bring finance, resource, change, risk and project management together under one, easy to manage canvas. And given how PMI’s Pulse of Profession survey throws light on the fact that only about 24% of organizations rate themselves above average in terms of their PPM maturity, there is a significant gap between the processes and tools at use with ample room for growth.

When you start new, it is natural to wonder if your portfolio has had an organic green pasture or a strategic one. Whether your changes have been assimilated or have they had a superficial integration. And after all, PPM rests on leadership initiatives as well as organizational objectives itself. Cut yourself some slack, invest in a tool that has your back and chooses to involve in your PPM initiatives with absolute buy-in. Soon you’ll find that PPM is a resounding success at your end!