Project Portfolio Management

High performing IT organizations cancel their fishing trips and put their gym sessions on-hold to ensure that the kids get home on time. Balance your priorities with project portfolio management. ...

... "PPM is something we do every day when we decide to go to work rather than fishing or pick up our children from daycare rather than heading to the gym first. " ...

Via Network Computing: Project Management

An IT Project Success Story

Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn has created a successful project portfolio. ...

... "With support from the Information Technology Project, created through an initiative by the Princess, Toyeeba got a new perspective on life. " ...

Via Bangkok's Independent Newspaper: Princess of Information Technology

Alignment and Transparency Key to Info Tech Success

Marketing success stories, open dialogue about IT opportunities, and investment portfolio management techniques are some of the ways to raise the profile of the information technology organization to business leaders in the organization. ...

... "As a result of all these factors, senior executives at most companies have little desire to deal with IT and its role in their business and relegate this function to the CIO. In addition, many CEOs find the financial and business returns on their IT investments obscure and difficult to quantify ... " ...

Via Wall Street Journal: Hidden Potential of IT

Outcome-Based Budgeting; The Right Focus

I recently read that the office of Philadelphia's new mayor, Michael Nutter, is initiating an outcome-based budgeting process. Other cities have had success with this approach as well.

Rather than each department planning their budget in isolation (as many companies do), the budget process will be focused on the outcomes that the money is meant to support, regardless of department.

Not only does an outcome-based focus make sense for budgeting, it makes sense for project measurement, portfolio management, and even Web sites. Much like budgets, all too many web sites are structured around organizational or departmental silos, as opposed to the outcomes that are supposed to be produced.

Portfolio of One

How would you like to explain your portfolio balance for the next three years with a $1B must-do technology investment? ...

... "FEMA's enterprise IT project is a multiyear program expected to cost at least $1 billion, according to Input Inc. " ...

Via Washington Tech: $1B overhaul

Portfolio Management: Lessons from the Super Bowl, Continued

If you are going to make investments from the high risk, high return segment of your portfolio, you better have the stomach for it. ...

Diversified Global Portfolio

Companies with diversified, global business portfolios are performing well under current market conditions. Similarly, as pointed out by TheFools, a career path would be served well by international exposure and global perspective. ...

... "with two teenagers preparing for college, I'm doing everything I can to nudge them both toward majors in international business. " ...

Via Motley Fool: Honey(well) of a Quarter

When to Pull Project Plug

CIO needs insight on the projects in the IT portfolio and whether pulling the plug is necessary. Ways to accomplish that are stage-gate or toll-gate framework, scoping for time to value, and dashboards. ...

... "the company has established a gate process in which each project stage has a set of requirements that are established and assessed by gatekeepers who evaluate whether projects should proceed ... " ...

IT Projects

Networking for Project Innovation

Neat concept for creating portfolios of work and collaborating for innovation. ...

... "Join or create groups of creative professionals, gathered around interests, to share content and ideas. " ...

Via Behance: Network

IT Portfolio Management

Meta Group insights on managing IT investments as a portfolio to maximize returns while balancing risk. ...

Portfolio Management Software Offered in SaaS Model

HP moves to offer PPM software in a SaaS model, like salesforce dot com. If the pricing is competitive, this is a nice way to buy by the drink and show value of project portfolio management before expanding to a large enterprise deployment. ...

... "Project and Portfolio Management Center – Standardizes, manages and captures the execution of project and operational activities, and provides critical information to assist real-time decision making. " ...

Via HP: HP Strategy to Expand Its Software-as-a-Service Offering

Project Approvals: A Tasty Proposition

The CFO's perspective is valuable to properly positioning project proposals in the portfolio. ...

... "The most important thing a CIO could do is take their CFO out to lunch and find out what the CFO looks for when considering a project, he said. " ...

Via bMighty: Have You taken Your CFO Out to Lunch Yet?

Chief Innovation Officer: Get Trained

Attend training on the Chief Innovation Officer role. The Chief Innovation Officer course is targeted to push the frontiers of the field and brings into focus fostering innovation talent, creating portfolio techniques, and enabling business processes necessary to execute innovation projects in support of growth. ...

... "BMG's Chief Innovation Officer seminar is designed specifically for business leaders who are leading the charge for innovation inside their organizations. This 2-day interactive seminar features emerging strategies, tools and techniques from some of the foremost thinkers in innovation today.

Upcoming Seminar Date: 4/30/2007 2 days Denver, CO " ...

Chief Innovation Officer Seminar

IT Governance: Board of Director Involvement

Corning demonstrates leading practices in board-level governance of IT - setting strategy, shaping the portfolio, understanding business impact, and sustaining benefit realization. The company expects growth through innovation in display technologies, diesel products, and telecommunications. Corning has a history of innovation and continues to invest in longer-term emerging technologies. ...

... "They play an active, creative role in helping to set IT strategy, make sure they know what's in the technology pipeline and what it will mean to the bottom line, and ride the results hard. " ...

Via Corporate Board Member Magazine: Board Level Governance of IT

Portfolio Management, Program Management, and Governance: A Rational Approach

There's an informative article by Michael Hanford on IBM's website about "Portfolio Management Governance." While it's aligned with IBM's Rational methodology, it provides useful information in general on the topic.

Many people confuse portfolio management, program management, and the relationship of governance to the both domains.

While there's no "right answer" per se, the generally accepted view is that portfolio management focuses on alignment with organizational strategy; setting priorities vs. resource and/or financial constraints; and insuring the right mix of initiatives to meet organizational goals. This is not unlike the management of a financial portfolio.

Program management on the other hand, deals more with execution of a group of related projects, insuring that the interrelationships are managed across them, and leveraging economies of scale (i.e. shared administration, management of benefits, etc.).

More importantly, portfolio management is ongoing and cyclical, while program management is temporary. Of course, some organizations refer to certain "channels" of work as programs, or even refer to mega-projects as programs, but the PMI Standard for Program Management considers these areas in the domain of functional/operational management or project management, respectively.

As for governance, it can work on multiple levels. There can be portfolio management governance, which makes decisions and sets policies at the portfolio level, or program management governance, which acts at the program level. Ideally the two work hand-in hand. For example, an executive council (and sub-councils if need be) can make decisions at the portfolio level (including authorization or termination of programs and projects), while a program oversight committee can govern a specific program, in alignment with the portfolio needs.

For more, here's the IBM article...

Establishing portfolio management governance: Key components

MS/Project is Dead: Long Live MS/Project

As reported in Computerworld and discussed here, Microsoft has announced MS/Project 2007, a new version that offers some usability and performance enhancements.

Perhaps the bigger news is that Project Portfolio Server 2007 has been announced, leveraging UMT's technology (which Microsoft acquired last year). It has the requisite bubble charts, strategy alignment tools, and what-if simulations. It even includes governance workflow, something long missing from the Microsoft suite. This should give the other big EPM tools a run for their money.

One thing worth noting about the Computerworld article (below) is the 20 million user base for MS/Project. Considering that the most frequently used project management tool is still MS/Excel, and that there are plenty of other project managers using non-Microsoft products, it gives a sense of how many project managers there are in the world. The last estimate I had heard several years ago was 16 million. That number is most likely quite a bit higher now, perhaps double.

Microsoft Looks to Boost Project Software’s Appeal

PPM Solution Roundup

Projects@Work has a new article outlining the current offerings in the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) market.

While it raises some good points (e.g. the need to beware of a consolidating market, and to determine the big players' dedication to the PPM space) and provides some good summary descriptions of each product's target market, it stops short of recommending one solution over the other.

Regardless, it's a good summary of the current major offerings on the market, for those analyzing potential PPM solutions.

http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/234511.cfm

IT Project Dashboard

Anecdote on IT project performance with mention of top 5 root causes. Chevron referenced for its management practices that focus attention on the highest value projects in its portfolio. ...

... "According to Accenture, the average IT project exceeds its projected cost and schedule by 56 percent and 84 percent, respectively. " ...

Via ITBusiness Edge: Link

Strategic Portfolio: High Value Differentiated ...

Chevron has created a governance framework for actively managing its high-value enterprise-level projects, differentiating from its volume of small projects. The high-value portfolio is also where most of the investment is aligned. ...

... "it's a strategic framework for the company's biggest and most important IT projects. It's intended to ensure that the projects with the biggest benefit to the company as a whole get the right funding at the right time, and that they get special management attention. " ...

Via Computerworld: Chevron: Where Size Is Opportunity

PMI Project of the Year: From Wasteland to Wildlife

I was recently in Seattle for a PMI leadership meeting as part of the core team for the Program and Portfolio Management Standards program. First, I was impressed by the beauty and cleanliness of the city, and the friendliness of the people. And of course I had to grab a coffee at the first Starbucks and see the guys at the famous Pike Place Fish Market throwing fish to each other. But I digress.

What really floored me was being at the PMI Awards presentation and seeing the short film on the project of the year---the Rocky Flats Closure project. This was a former nuclear weapons facility (and wasteland) that had to undergo an immense cleanup, including nuclear deactivation and material removal. Except the result wasn't a mere cleanup---the site was turned into a beautiful wildlife refuge, and will soon have a public space for hiking, biking, and horseback riding.

It demonstrates what can be achieved when you blend passionate leadership and sound project management. The project's website is below...

Welcome Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site (Main)

Project Gates: Are Kill Points Really Considered?

Since capital is usually constrained in most organizations, are we really making the best use of our project stage-gates as potential kill-points? Are we fully considering the cost-to-completion, the probability of realizing the original benefits documented in the business case, or a declining ROI if costs escalate? We will be doing a service to our organization if we take some time to develop exit criteria and consider alternatives at the project stage-gates. There's always another project in the portfolio. ...

... "The Project Plan should have included a schedule for steering committee meetings and other key points to ensure regular tracking of project progress and release of status reports. Additionally, the plan should have identified milestones and project kill points, that is, go/no go decision points for the action of senior management, the steering committee or other authority. " ...

Queensland University: Controlling phase

IT Governance: Firing on All Cylinders ...

An IT Governance Practice Director offers some good insights on successful IT governance, which requires progressing your maturity across multiple dimensions of management: portfolio, project, resource ... leading to the end game of transforming IT into a powerhouse of value creation. ...

... "Successful IT Governance requires effective portfolio, project, process, financial, resource, risk, and communication management. It requires the IT organization to switch its mentality from that of a cost center - We're just here to keep the lights on - to that of a profit center ... " ...

Via ITworld: Getting Started With IT Governance

PMPort Announced; PMI's News Aggregator

The Project Management Institute (PMI) has just announced PMPort, an news aggregator that pulls to gether project management related news feeds on a daily basis.

I think they might need to flesh out the search criteria, but looks like it could be another interesting source of information.

PMport - Keeping stakeholders in touch with project, program and portfolio management around the globe - every day

Project Management Winds Are Changing

There's an excellent article by Betsy Morris in the current issue of Fortune Magazine about how the Jack Welch way of winning is---dare we say---a thing of the past.

How is this relevant to the project management field? Well, for one, it means recognizing the winds of change in the industry, and how projects are selected, promoted, and managed. Above all, this impacts program and portfolio management. Particularly, note four trends in management thinking:

Innovation:

Let's take Welch's old rule of being number 1 or 2 in your market (or else fixing, selling, or closing the business). The new rule is to find a niche and create something new. The article uses CocaCola as an example of a company that was basking in their glory as number 1, but eventually realized (although it took a while) that energy drinks and bottled water were about to pass them. As the article points out, energy drinks "are now expected to outearn every other category of soft drink within three years." Parhaps marketing guru Harry Beckwith said it best in Selling the Invisible when he said that it's fine to do something 10% better until someone else comes along and does it 110% different.

Customer-Centric Management:

Welch started a whole movement of focus on the shareholder, which led many organizations to ignore the future amid pressure to appease shareholders and "make the numbers." Now, organizations realize that the customer is king. The article references several companies that have made this realization, and the trend is heading in that direction. After all, statistics show that even a minor improvement in customer retention leads to a major increase in profitability. The days of short-term thinking may be finally coming to an end.

Reinvention vs. Incremental Change:

Since it seemed Jack Welch could do no wrong, everyone imitated whatever Jack did---and Six Sigma was no exception. The problem is that, according to the article, of the 58 large companies that announced Six Sigma programs, 91% have trailed the S&P 500 since. As the article points out, that's mostly because Six Sigma is intended to "fix an existing process," whereas innovative companies that developed new and unique products (or reinvented their business) took the lead.

Stop Ranking Your Players; Inspire Passion:

Once of Welch's most controversial systems was to constantly rank his employees and regularly weed out the "C" players. But companies have had difficulty getting productivity and innovation out of "increasingly disenfranchised employees." In the article, Christopher Bartlett of Harvard Business School put it best:

"People don't come to work to be No. 1 or No. 2 or to get a 20% net return on assets. They want a sense of purpose. They come to work to get meaning from their lives."

Side editorial: For the "enlightened" approach of finding the hidden strength in everyone (something Peter Drucker always suggested), read Marcus Buckingham's Now Discover Your Strengths (or any of his books for that matter). Or read Dennis Littky's The Big Picture: Education is Everyone's Business. I assure you, you'll never be the same.

Meanwhile, I highly recommend the article (the link is below) for those looking for the latest trends in management thinking, and who want to remain one step ahead.

From a project management perspective, the handwriting is clearly on the wall. The traditional "execute to a set of deliverables" approach won't cut it. Today's project manager needs to be thinking about things like innovation, customer focus, business transformation, business acumen, change leadership, and team passion. Those focused on merely schedule, budget, and scope will soon be dinosaurs.

Fortune: The new rules - Jul. 11, 2006

Implementing PPM: Don't Expect Overnight Results

Karen Klein of Projects@Work interviewed Daniel Stang, a principle analyst at Gartner, on preparing for Project Portfolio Management (PPM).

Some key lessons are to not expect overnight success, to implement in stages (beginning with automating what is already working), and to engage a good change management team.

Organizations that attempt to go from zero to high level maturity via a big-bang approach run a high risk of failure. Stang also cautions against trying to sell PPM initially on the hard benefits. The benefits at the early stages of maturity tend to be softer, with the tangible benefits coming later.

Here's the article. Also, see the free PPM Software Evaluation tool offered at the bottom of the article.

http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/232143.cfm

Elusive IT Project Value: Book Tells How To Achieve It

I've just finished reading an excellent book on achieving value from IT projects, The Information Paradox: Realizing the Business Benefits of Information Technology, by John Thorp and the Fujitsu Consulting's Center for Strategic Leadership.

Thorp and company claim that today's IT projects are evolving more and more from simple automation efforts to complex "information" initiatives, and even further---to complete business transformation initiatives. This calls for a different approach and requires IT and Business collaboration.

As the book points out, the classic "let's buy a product and assume it comes with automatic benefits" approach doesn't work in today's more complex arena (and in fact it probably never did). In a complex business transformation initiative, trying to assume that an IT project in isolation will deliver value is wishful thinking.

The book also points out the four critical dimensions of complexity, which it says are blind spots in traditional thinking:

1) Linkage - to other related initiatives and to business strategy
2) Reach - those areas of organizational structure or supply chain processes that may be impacted by the change, or that need revisiting in order to bring about the benefits
3) People- those affected by the change and/or that need to be engaged (i.e. proactive change leadership and stakeholder analysis)
4) Time - the time it takes to manage the overall initiative, including the above dimensions, to fully realize the benefits (most companies grossly underestimate this)

Unfortunately, many IT projects just focus on on-time and on-budget delivery (resulting in a situation that the book describes as, "the operation was successful but the patient died"). Thorp and company refer to this as "investment myopia."

Instead, a committment to business value, ongoing process improvements, frequent iterations of delivery, and better project selection techniques are key. Most of all, we need to be aware of the blind spots mentioned above.

The book goes on to describe how a system of program management, portfolio management, and governance, with a focus on benefits realization, can bring about results. It also cautions about the dangers of treating selections as a one-time annual event, making selections in isolation (instead of in the context of investment programs), and not looking at all aspects of value (i.e. going beyond simple financial measures).

I highly recommend the book for those struggling with determining the value of IT, or trying to bring about collaborative change in their organizations. If you look at any major successful transformation, it was brought about by a marriage of technology, business process, and organizational change, and with full backing from senior management. This book can go a long way toward helping make this happen.

IT Governance Meets Server Virtualization ...

Cassatt and NEC combine to deliver portfolio management for virtualization of servers aimed at the financial services industry. ...

... "Cassatt Corp., an innovator in providing enterprise software and services to enable agile IT infrastructures, and NEC Solutions (America), Inc., a premier provider of integrated solutions for the connected enterprise in North America, announced the immediate availability of a fast track IT Portfolio Management solution for server virtualization and consolidation. Express IT Portfolio Management (e-ITPM) is a joint solution from Cassatt and NEC that provides financial services customers with the ability to realize greater costs savings by combining IT governance initiatives with internal IT projects on virtualization and server consolidation. " ...

IT Governance Meets Server Virtualization: Via Cassatt Corporation: Cassatt and NEC Expand Partnership to Target Financial Services Customers: Joint solution combines NEC Solutions America IT Governance Practices with Cassatt's Server Virtualization Management and Consolidation Solution ...

ITIL Service Desk Software: Market Consolidation ...

Mercury acquires ITIL service desk software vendor to improve the depth of its offering. Rapid integration of this acquisition should position Mercury as a viable competitor in the service desk space with its suite approach to IT service and portfolio management. ...

... "The acquired offering is an advanced set of ITIL-based technologies that help enable companies to take a business-centric approach to managing an enterprise service desk with low total cost of ownership. This technology provides advanced out-of-the-box ITIL-based capabilities in incident management, problem resolution, configuration management, change management and release management, along with robust functionality in asset and inventory management. Mercury provides this technology as part of its Mercury Service Desk product, which is available as a strategic part of the Mercury BTO Enterprise and part of the Mercury Application Change Lifecycle solution. Mercury plans to further incorporate this technology to expand its set of ITSM offerings within the Mercury BTO Enterprise. " ...

ITIL Service Desk Software: Market Consolidation: Via Mercury Interactive: Mercury Accelerates BTO Strategy For IT Service Management With Strategic Acquisitions ...

The Making of a PMI Standard; Behind the Scenes

For those who wondered what goes on behind the scenes of creating a PMI global standard, there's a nice writeup in the latest PMI Community Post, which gets sent to all certified PMPs.

In the article, titled Evolution of a PMI Global Standard, PMI reveals the standards creation process, from the project approval and charter through the team selection, standard development, and exposure draft process.

Having served on the leadership team for PMI's new Standard for Program Management and Standard for Portfolio Management, I can say that volunteering on a standards creation project is very rewarding.

It's an opportunity to work with the best in the business and get involved in a large virtual project with people from all over the world. I definitely recommend the experience. Plus you get to earn PDUs if you're a certified PMP.

For those interested in volunteering, here's PMI's Volunteer Opportunity website, which has a link to the Opportunity Page. Tell ' em PMThink sent you.

PMO Process Primer

Last month, I mentioned a four-part series on Projects@Work about establishing PMOs. The first installment was on defining the role of your PMO up front.

Not sure what took so long for the second installment, but it's finally here and worth the wait (maybe it's a monthly series). This installment talks about the types of processes your PMO might undertake, and offers some food for thought with each process area. According to the article, a PMO might consider:

Project Processes (including demand management, approval, portfolio management, project/application lifecycle, and risk mitigation)

Analysis Processes (including business analysis, business case development, and process redesign)

Planning Processes (including planning and tracking, and capital planning and budgeting)

Administration Processes (including methodology management, training, tool development/ownership, and knowledge management)

To date, this series is an excellent primer on PMO startups. It's insightful and obviously written by someone who has had some varied experience in PMO implementation. I'm looking forward to the remaining two parts and will be sure to post the links here.

Kudos to the author, Ted Stephens, an associate principal at Intellilink.

http://www.projectsatwork.com/content/Articles/231627.cfm

PPM Software Evaluation Tool; Don't Get Stuck Without It

Yesterday, I posted a link to an excellent article on a software selection process. Now Projects@Work has just announced their PPM Software Evaluation Tool, a downloadable tool that offers "a comprehensive set of questions and parameters for organizations to consider when selecting a project portfolio management solution."

Here's an excerpt from the accompanying article (which is valuable in itself) ...

Don’t settle for presentations and proposals. Regardless of how you proceed through the procurement process, make sure to get your hands on the solution before you make a decision... An ideal, but time-and cost-intensive approach is to pilot the software on one or a subset of live projects before you commit to a full-scale implementation. While this last option will require you to invest in training and a limited installation of the software, if the solution turns out to be the wrong one you have minimized the cost of a failed implementation.

This is sage advice, as many of these tools look great in a demo---or even a brief conference room pilot---but until you experience how easy or difficult it is to actually configure the tools, you don't really know what you're getting yourself into.

As the saying goes, "Fail fast, fail cheap."

Link

Project Accomplishments Recognized: KC MO ...

Kansas City recognized for its accomplishments in project management methods and delivery. ...

... "The City was awarded a regional APWA Management Innovation Award for the development of the Capital Improvements Management Office. The office was created as a partnership with MWH Americas Inc. and Burns and McDonnell to re-engineer the City's delivery processes and reinvigorate its backlogged capital improvement project portfolio. CIMO has used inventive corrective strategies and industry best practices to create a centralized, more efficient approach to capital project delivery and accountability. Additionally, three of the division's capital improvement projects were named regional APWA Projects of the Year. These awards recognize projects that exemplify outstanding project execution through project management; timely execution; safety performance; community relations; and quality control, construction innovations, and time and/or money-saving techniques. " ...

Project Accomplishments Recognized: KC MO: Via Kansas City Mo: News from City Hall: City receives four regional public works awards ...

Project Software: Sage Bolt-On Acquisitions ...

Sage Software makes bolt-on acquisitions to round out its capabilities in the construction project management software space and build on synergies with the Timberline product line. ...

... "Sage Software, a subsidiary of The Sage Group plc, announced that it has agreed to acquire the Master Builder product and business from Intuit Inc. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and expected to be completed within 30 days. The company also announced that it has acquired Contractor Anywhere Inc., developer of accounting, service, and project management software for building and service contractors. The acquired products will complement Sage Software's award-winning Sage Timberline Office, which provides accounting, estimating, and operations management software for the construction and real estate industries. " ...

Via The Sage Group: Sage Software Expands its Construction and Real Estate Software Portfolio with Acquisitions of Intuit´s Master Builder Business and of Contractor Anywhere ...