Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is not just a buzzword. As companies and Project Management Offices strive to stay competitive, it can make sense for them to view their projects not just case-by-case, but rather on an ongoing daily basis, as part of a single portfolio of activities. These activities all share an overall strategic goal, and are prioritized for maximum gain.
If this sounds a bit overwhelming, take heart: there are numerous project portfolio management resources and technology out there. PPM software (yes, like Eclipse!) can help you easily see, manage, and measure the entire system of project delivery.
What’s more, it focuses on three main challenges every organization faces: project intake, prioritization, and approval; project visibility, communication, and accountability; and resource management, capacity planning, and tracking.
When should you consider using Project Portfolio Management software?
Every organization is different, and the reasons you choose to implement PPM software might be different to someone else’s. To speak broadly, portfolio management software might be worth considering if:
- You frequently find you have insufficient resources
- You find it difficult to see where the bottlenecks in the delivery system are
- You find it difficult to know whether resources are addressing the highest priority needs
- You often doubt whether you’re doing the ‘right’ projects
- You find it difficult to track which department is taking care of which project
- You find it difficult to get a grasp on the status of all projects, and who’s working on what.
You can see how PPM software addresses some of these issues in an on-demand video.
Or, if you’re curious about how a PPM tool like Eclipse can be suited to your specific business needs, contact us to organize a personalized, live demo.
What’s your experience working with PPM software?
If you work in project management or a project management office, chances are the acronym 'PPM' is thrown around on a daily basis. If you're new to PPM, you may be curious about what it actually is, and how it’s different to plain old project management.
Here are some common questions and answers about PPM - think of it as your 'cheat sheet' when you want a refresher on the basics. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you think we've left something off, add it in the comments section!
What is PPM?
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the method of analyzing and collectively managing a group of current or proposed projects. It's a strategic approach to managing project investments, with the goal of maximizing realized business value and using resources to maximum effectiveness to achieve that value.
How is it different to Project Management?
Project Management tends to focus on project initiation through closeout on any single project, while PPM covers all other aspects of investment decision making and evaluation. Project management is the ‘micro’ to PPM's ‘macro’, in that PPM seeks to manage the entire delivery system: all the resources, all the projects, in all stages of the lifecycle.
Why should I pursue PPM?
Obviously, we're great fans of PPM here at Eclipse, so we could be here all day answering this question! Instead, here are a few simple reasons why project portfolio management might be right for you:
- Better the return on a fixed resource investment (people)
- Increase likelihood of achieving strategic objectives
- Increase organization alignment
- Increase job satisfaction and staff retention
- Manage projects easily and efficiently
- Enjoy a better overall value throughput to organization
- Reduce risk of project failure.
Is PPM Easy?
PPM may be simple, but it's not easy. It requires accurate, complete, and timely project data, and it requires behavioral changes at all levels of the organization. It's also useless if you don't have motivated and skilled staff.
What are the critical success factors of PPM?
A few of these factors will help your project portfolio management initiative succeed:
- Sustained, visible executive commitment
- Incremental introduction of changes
- Defined and staffed 'process coach' rules
- Explicit procedural guidance.
Do you have anything to add, or any questions of your own? We'd love to hear your thoughts - leave them below in the comments section.
If you'd like to know more about project management, come along to one of our free 'Project Portfolio Management Simplified' webinars. They'll provide you with a solid grounding of PPM principles. Register here - the next one is scheduled for April 26. Or, check out our white paper about starting a PPM initiative.
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We recently signed up to be an exhibitor at the annual Educause conference, held in November in Denver. The conference looks at IT in the higher education industry, and a wealth of ideas and resources usually come out of it.
The higher education industry is somewhat unique in their requirements. Universities and colleges often have multiple departments, broken down into smaller offices and even smaller teams, and as a result often speak a different vernacular to other sectors.
There can also be a 'disconnect' between the IT department and other departments across the university. Throw an increase in student enrollments into the mix, and suddenly, there's more projects and even more resource limitations. So just how do these institutes improve efficiency across the entire organization?
One way is via project portfolio management. Countless universities have a central Project Management Office, while others employ project portfolio management tools and best practices.
So how can PPM help universities and colleges?
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Minimize project risks
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Centralize the visibility of all ongoing initiatives
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Track time entry
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Track budgets
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Streamline the internal project intake process
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Deliver projects on-time
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Compare project requests against the institution's mission and strategic goals
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Demonstrate how project work can directly support each department's objectives.
The Library and Technology Services Department at Wellesley College recently started using Eclipse PPM to manage their projects, as they wanted a way to store all of their project information in one place. Eclipse offered them a customizable solution that streamlined their internal project intake process.
The research office at Carleton University also implemented Eclipse PPM to manage their portfolio of research projects more effectively.
How have you used project portfolio management in the higher education industry?
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Back in January, we talked about goals to set for your PPM processes. It was the start of a new year, and a time for setting goals for the future.
Now, with spring on the horizon, it's a fitting time to look towards renewal and reinvention - namely, of your Project Management Office. Take a moment to assess your PMO. You may have projects in place and everything may be running smoothly, but are there areas that could be spruced up a bit even more? Perhaps you now have the time to even get to those miscellaneous tasks that often get forgotten when it's busy.
Here are a few ideas for some PMO 'spring cleaning':
Celebrate your successes. We focus so much on risks in project management, and often forget any wins we've had. Uncover some success stories from your team and congratulate yourselves - maybe even share them with your wider community. It will put you in the good books of stakeholders, and will likely brighten the days of your staff.
Do some housekeeping. It sounds simple enough, but it's amazing how easily things like distribution lists, templates, and contact lists can go out of date. Update the contact information for everyone involved with your PMO - from staff members, to vendors, to stakeholders. If you have formal processes in place for things like mass-emailing, or departmental calendars, take a minute for review and see if they need updating. Similarly, check in on any project management templates you may have - could they use some polishing up?
Think About Training. There's probably more than a few project managers in your PMO who could use some additional or refresher project management training. As technology, project management tools, and processes change, it's important to stay on top. See if any of your staff members could benefit from some training or informational webinars, and while you're at it, double check any training plans you have - are they still relevant to your PMO? Could they use some changes, or a refresher, too?
Meet and Greet. Your team may have worked together for a while, or perhaps they're just starting - either way, are you sure that they know who's who? It might be a good time to schedule a small time slot to re-introduce your team members to one another. If everyone has a better understanding of each person's role, your project management office will surely function more smoothly and productively, ensuring the right tasks are assigned to the right people.
If you'd like to learn more about Project Management Offices, attend our free webinar - "Setting up a PMO is Not for the Faint Hearted!" The next session is on March 27.
Do you have any ideas for further 'PMO spring cleaning'? We'd love to hear them - share your ideas below.
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We recently attended the 2012 HIMSS (Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) Conference, where more than 37,000 health practitioners, project managers, and IT professionals gathered to hear about the latest in healthcare IT. It was wonderful to catch up with our current healthcare clients, as well as meet some new faces (hello if any new people we met at HIMSS are reading this now!)
The time we spent talking to so many people working in all facets of the health industry got us thinking about using PPM in specific industries - in this case, obviously, healthcare.
The contemporary healthcare IT industry is one that demands timely education and knowledge, in order to investigate priority issues. There is a need for healthcare facilities, particularly hospitals, to adopt a 'nimble' approach to effectively balancing their work assignments. Workload can often be driven by demands from government sources, and projects are typically in a range of departmental areas - from IT, to administration, to a clinical setting. Add the multiple departmental-nature of healthcare facilities to the mix, and you've got a recipe for project risk, incompletion, and failure.
Or do you?
This is where effective project management comes into play and can help an organization to prosper in their projects, rather than drown. In addition to PM methodologies, using a PPM software tool can provide healthcare facilities with a best practices approach, allowing them to implement structure and consistency across all departments. A PPM software tool can also provide the visibility and communication needed across all work areas - all with simple and easy to use functionality.
Eclipse is an ideal PPM solution to manage healthcare projects, as its scalability means it can handle projects that are small and relatively simple, as well as bigger and more complicated.
Next week we're running a demo of Eclipse PPM software that is specifically targeted to the healthcare industry. If you're a healthcare executive, IT Director, PMO management, or Project Manager looking to see how hospitals and health systems are currently using Eclipse PPM, we hope to 'see' you there!
What's your experience working with PPM for healthcare? We'd love to hear your thoughts and comments - drop us a line below.
Next time: We'll be talking about spring cleaning your PMO (yes, spring cleaning extends beyond houses!)
This question came from a recent webinar, "Project Portfolio Management Simplified."
QUESTION:
How many projects does a company need to manage on an annual basis or what is the minimum dollar value of projects, before a company can expect to achieve enough value from Project Portfolio Management and a PPM tool?
ANSWER:
There isn’t a magic number to answer this question. Implementing Project Portfolio Management and a PPM tool really should be considered a kind of scalable set of processes rather than a heavy weight academic exercise or framework that is put in place.
For example, you can run the financials of a business on a spreadsheet, but at some point in time there’s just enough moving parts where you need to get a real financial system in place. I think the same would be said of your project and resource portfolio.
There isn’t a hard value for number of resources and projects, but if you’ve got 3 resources and 10 projects that you’re managing, in your group in a year, it is certainly a portfolio, but you might be able to manage that very loosely. You may have all the dynamics in your head but you get to a point where you have enough resources and projects going on with different dimensions and stakeholders that there is more than you can do at any point in time.
Those are all things that really contribute to the issues to know when you’re really ready for project portfolio software and PPM process. Rather than saying what is the size to achieve value from PPM implementation, understand your organization's main challenges and implement processes that are focused around that particular area.
This is where the academics might have a different view on this. There is a huge body of knowledge out there that can be very academic at times, that says if you don’t do project portfolio management in this way, using all of these skills, disciplines, knowledge areas and processes, you are not doing it right. But being from a PPM solution company, what we often see is that PPM implementations are over engineered.
It is more important is to look at the whole scale of a discipline if you’re a smaller organization that’s trying to achieve or get control of an area, for example resource management. Implement portfolio processes that are lighter weight and focused around that particular area and don’t worry about all the other aspects that might be included in some of the other portfolio process areas.
It doesn’t take long before managing many projects and number of resources in your head or on a spreadsheet becomes very challenging. Managing projects that way certainly isn’t accessible in a widespread way in terms of the organization and other stakeholders. What is important is to understand the value that you’ll get out of a PPM implementation, and to put a light weight implementation of PPM in place so as to not be completely out of step with the size and maturity of the organization.
There is no hard number, but I think PPM really should be considered a kind of scalable set of processes rather than a heavy weight academic exercise or framework to put in place.
If you're curious about how PPM software fits in with implementation, attend one of our free demonstrations of the Eclipse PPM tool.
You have started the year with promises of personal improvement: get to the gym more often, get your finances on track and eat more vegetables. Have you given thought to improving your
project portfolio management (PPM) processes?
If you have Project Portfolio Management Software in place, there is always room for continuous improvement and re-evaluation of process. Here are some areas to continually review and improve, not just at the start of the year:
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Improve Project Resource Management:
This can be done in a couple of ways. First, ensure you are capturing allocation to non-project activities, to ensure you are seeing the ‘whole picture’. Non-project activities would be all of the daily work that must be done to keep the organization running. Secondly, you should start using generic resource types in your PPM tool to capture resource demand. This will lessen the likelihood of continually over-allocating named resources. Resource types should be synonymous with the skill sets that reside within each organizational unit. Resource Managers can then apply the appropriate resource types to named resources in your PPM solution.
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Time Track Actual Project Effort:
Get a clear sense of where time is being spent by tracking time. If you have not been doing this, begin with communicated and training staff to demonstrate the value of time capture. Tracking time right in your PPM tool allows you to compare planned vs. real effort. Once you have a sense of where you are spending time, you will be able to better estimate for new projects and understand if and where there is capacity to take on more work.
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Empower Project Team Members To Update Project Status:
Give your team the ability to update their assigned tasks and make it part of their weekly routine. Communicate the importance of having project status up to date. Having the up to date project information will give you a clear snapshot of exactly how your project and portfolio are performing and will give you the power to make informed decisions.
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Incorporate A More Formal Process For Project Prioritization:
A project portfolio management tool can improve the efficiency of processing project requests, evaluating budget and resource requirements and scoring projects based on RIO and risk. Creating and enforcing a prioritization process tied to your PPM tool will help automate the process.
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Capture And Share Lessons Learned:
All lessons should be captured in your PPM software to make reporting simple. Encourage your project managers to document lessons learned throughout the project lifecycle, not just at the end of the project. At the project closeout stage, capture any last lessons learned and delete any obsolete or irrelevant lessons. The PMO should produce and publish a list of lessons learned on a semi-annual basis and communicate key submissions to Project Managers, Resource Managers, and Senior Management. See a previous blog for tips on how to overcome challenges of a traditional approach to lessons learned.
What other areas have you decided to focus on this year in regards to managing your portfolio of projects? Share them below.
Both the PMBOK Guide (Fourth Edition) and PMI’s Practice Standard for Project Risk Management highlight the need to consider positive events (opportunities) as well as negative events (threats) when performing project risk management activities.
In practice, the majority of the organizations I’ve worked with have demonstrated inconsistency when applying risk management practices. So why should we concern ourselves with opportunity management when threat management should be of greater importance, and yet, does not appear to be succeeding?
Here are a few reasons why a balanced approach to risk management that incorporates opportunities is advisable.
- To paraphrase Carlo Muzzarelli, who provided a great response to a question about this topic in the LinkedIn Project Management Questions section, without considering opportunities when planning and executing a project, at best, you are likely to meet your schedule, cost & other baselines. More likely than not, due to the impact of realized threats, you will end up violating one of these constraints. By managing opportunities, you’ll increase the likelihood of shifting the variance bell curve in the right direction.
- Risk identification workshops provide both a good team building opportunity as well as a cathartic medium for team members to vent or share the angst that they might be feeling about a project. However, certain participants such as project sponsors or other senior stakeholders might not be impressed by a purely negative focus in these workshops. Identifying and exploring opportunities is one way for the team to gain some credibility “brownie points” with these senior stakeholders.
- By including opportunities in qualitative risk analysis workshops, a project manager can get a more balanced idea of individual biases than if the discussions focus on threats alone.
- It can be challenging to secure commitment from risk response owners (especially stakeholders that are only peripherally involved with the project) to execute risk response plans and this is especially true if they are being asked to do this to respond to threats. You might find that this reluctance to participate in the risk response process dissipates if the same stakeholder is responsible for a few opportunities as well.
It can be challenging for a Project Manager or team member to identify and analyze threats and opportunities in an unbiased, balanced fashion – it’s common to dwell on what can go wrong instead of thinking about what could go better than expected. This bias could provide rationale for leveraging the services of an Opportunity Analyst.
While some might be context sensitive, most common risk management tools (E.g. Delphi method, Decision tree analysis, Ishikawa diagrams) are as applicable to opportunities as they are to threats.
For those that have struggled with selling the value of project risk management, opportunity management is a good way to show that the cup is half-full and not always half-empty!
It’s a phenomenon that I’ve witnessed sufficiently often that the evidence can no longer be termed “anecdotal”. An organization wishes to improve their project management capabilities – through investments in process, staffing and/or technology they experience some initial successes. But a few months in to the initiative, momentum and enthusiasm wane and focus shifts resulting in the capability improvement hitting a plateau or even worse back sliding to pre-improvement performance.
There are multiple triggers for this behavior, some of which I’ve covered in previous articles:
- Lack of effective, committed sponsorship
- Improvement initiative was not structured, planned or managed like a project
- Lack of a multi-phase roadmap with SMART business objectives defined for each phase
- Ineffective change management
- Shifting priorities cannibalizing resources from improvement efforts
There’s an old saying “Anything worth doing is worth doing well”. I’ve underlined the initial use of worth because it identifies a probable root cause – project management is considered a hygiene factor by many organizations as opposed to being the source of competitive advantage that associations like PMI have attempted to evangelize.
For a typical organization, once critical project management issues have been addressed, the change effort involved to achieve a higher level of maturity can’t be justified and focus shifts to other priorities. Hiring skilled project managers is often viewed as a simpler approach to addressing project predictability challenges.
This behavior tends to be common in industries where competitive pressures are low, service and product prices are high, or they have a captive market. For example, a few years ago in the legal industry it was difficult to gain buy-in for capability improvement initiatives because most law firms were doing very well in spite of having low project management maturity levels.
An analogy can be drawn to IT operations management – while there is significant knowledge about methodologies and best practices, most organizations are still choosing to operate at a low level of maturity.
Does this mean you shouldn’t try to champion or launch a PM capability improvement initiative? No, but you should be realistic about expected outcomes, and focus on developing and implementing changes that will fit the culture of your organization. “World class” project management capabilities do not make sense for all organizations. As with any capability improvement initiative, it is crucial to balance the hard and soft costs against expected benefits when defining a target for improvement.
Avoid gold plating – each change should have a demonstrable connection to a perceived business benefit. The “engine” of improvement initiatives runs on the “fuel” of success so make sure to track and report all achievements. And keep “soft-selling” the value of project management. With persistence, planning and realistic expectations, managing your capability improvement initiative will not feel like a roller coaster ride!
This question came from our July 26 webinar: Setting up a PMO is not for the Faint Hearted! It is an important question to consider if your organization has previously attempted unsuccessfully to implement a Project Management Office (PMO).
Q: For organizations that have tried PMOs and failed, what would you recommend for a name of the "new" attempt to launch a PMO?
A:
If your organization has a “bad taste in its mouth,” from a previous experience of trying to roll out a Project Management Office, you may meet resistance or a negative “conditioned response” when attempting to try again. Some selling and updated positioning of the rationale for the PMO initiative may be required. A different name for the entity may be a part of that new communication plan to break the association with historical efforts that didn’t work.
When thinking about the name and communication around it, you may want to get a little more creative and position the PMO more around the specific focus of this effort.
For example: Project Management Center of Excellence, Portfolio Management Center of Excellence or the PPM Group. One of our attendees suggested that they had changed the acronym of the group to P3MO (Project, Portfolio, Program Management Office) in a similar circumstance. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box, after all it’s the services you offer and the value you add to the organization that are important.
Putting a new spin on the way you advertise, position and communicate the new PMO, to disconnect it from the first attempt, may help increase your chances of employees having an open mind and not “jumping ship before you are out of port”.
If you are looking for more information on creating and running PMOs you can find resources in the Eclipse PPM Community website: