Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Today

An Analogy for PPM

At lunch, Tom George and I talked about analogies for PPM.  If project portfolio performance is as important as we think it is, then how do we communicate that to other people?  If everyone runs projects but not everyone goes "duh" when they hear about Project Portfolio Management, how do we make it more obvious?

So, we came up with an analogy - a lunch-time analogy.  In fact, lunch is the analogy.  Just about everyone knows how to make a meal.  Last friday, I made myself a lunch of a turkey and ham sandwich, pretzels and a glass of ice water.  Today, however, we went out to lunch at our favorite Oakland lunch spot (Phoh 84) and therein lies the analogy.  It's one thing to make a meal, it's another thing entirely to run a restaurant.

Nearly anyone can make a meal.  Very few people can run a successful restaurant that serves a good lunch, where all meals must come out right every time: timely, cost-effective, healthy and tasty.

The difference between running projects and project portfolio management is the difference between making a meal and running a restaurant.  Most businesses run their projects like meal-making and not like a restaurant.  Most projects are made one-at-a-time and not as part of a well-conceived menu.  When you allow your project portfolio to be prepared and served like a loose collection of meals, many of them will just simply taste bad.

Great New Blog

ITtoolbox has published my weblog on PPM for IT.  Check it out!

This blog will focus on IT as a launch pad for PPM.  I may post some of that stuff here too.

Future States section 1d.

Projects form temporary investments in skilled disciplines, financial resources and imagined future states.

The key points that are typically emphasized here are temporary, investments and skills.  Sure, most projects are bound by a pre-defined beginning and ending; they require an investment of people's time, money or both; they are temporary by nature and so they require a unique management approach.  These are not new notions.

What is new is the expectation that these investments will deliver an anticipated return that aligns with known goals.  What is new is that managers need to view these investments as fitting into a larger pipeline of projects.  What is new is the expectation that projects fit clearly into the big picture. What is new is that project success can no longer be defined in departmental silos. 

Most importantly, what is new is that management leadership is becoming aware that the performance of the project portfolio has a major impact on company performance, and that "delegating" (abdicating) the management of projects as stand-alone efforts must end.

The People Part, part 2

Now that the combinations and permutations of project teams has been sketched out a bit in the previous post, I want to focus on the people who will create the Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solution.  For the record: these people will determine the success of the PPM solution: they will budget, plan and implement the PPM program; they will establish the systems and processes that govern the portfolio; they will create the team that follows them to keep the system running.  This team will have a substantial and lasting impact on the project teams in the rest of the organization.  This team will answer the questions at the end of the People Part.

It is worth spending time to understand how this team gets created and what it can and must do.  For the moment, I will call this the "core team".  The core team typically starts with one or two intrepid individuals.  These people see the opportunity and set the wheels in motion.  Quite often, they carry it all the way from inception to completion.  At times, they may feel like they are swimming upstream.  Among other things, the core team must do the following:

• define the problem
• define the solution
• articulate the benefits
• develop the implementation strategy
• create and/or maintain the motivation for change
• anticipate and remove the barriers to success
• lead the implementation effort
• establish the ongoing management program

We can spend days, weeks, months, years working on models and flowcharts and requirements (and we will).  These things are critical.  But if the core team doesn't have the skills and the organizational momentum behind them, the PPM initiative will not reach its potential.  This team should have a few characteristics and skill sets:

• leadership
• real world PPM experience
• methodology implementation
• change management
• access to power
• clear vision of the desired future state

Finally, if the core team (the people part) has the vision and motivation, the model doesn't have to be perfect.  It will evolve over time no matter how developed it is when the PPM program starts.  What's needed is a core team that can pull it off.  That team will change the organization for good.

Franklin and the CIO

Franklin has asked some good questions on today’s CIO agenda.

• How does IT deliver projects that bring real value to the Business
• How to link the Business objectives to the IT objectives
• How to demonstrate the Business Value of IT

These are pressing questions for organizations right now.  They probably should have been pressing questions 30 years ago, but alas, we still had to figure out how to make a relational database work reliably. 

The only thought I would add at this point, since Franklin has not yet given us his answers, is that IT should not be left alone to establish alignment. Any CEO or COO worth her salt should be deeply involved in creating alignment across all departments, and IT in particular (at least for the sake of this discussion).  If IT is responsible for creating alignment, then the alignment process will suffer from a power vacuum.  In my experience, the owner of revenue has more power than the owner of IT, so who will call the shots?

An approach we have seen work is to focus on the portfolio governance process at the top-line process.  Projects are the top-line controlling process for most value-added IT work.  And rarely do IT projects happen in IT alone; this is where the CEO/COO earns her pay. 

I’m interested in reading more from Franklin to learn what approached he recommends. 

These are pressing questions for organizations right now.  They probably should have been pressing questions 30 years ago, but alas, we still had to figure out how to make a relational database work reliably. 

The only thought I would add at this point, since Franklin has not yet given us his answers, is that IT should not be left alone to establish alignment. Any CEO or COO worth her salt should be deeply involved in creating alignment across all departments, and IT in particular (at least for the sake of this discussion).  If IT is responsible for creating alignment, then the alignment process will suffer from a power vacuum.  In my experience, the owner of revenue has more power than the owner of IT, so who will call the shots?

An approach we have seen work is to focus on the portfolio governance process at the top-line process.  Projects are the top-line controlling process for most value-added IT work.  And rarely do IT projects happen in IT alone; this is where the CEO/COO earns her pay. 

I’m interested in reading more from Franklin to learn what approached he recommends. 

The People Part

Just a word to expand on the People part of the People-Process-Technology triangle from PPM Fundamentals.  Let's start simple: projects are accomplished by project teams.  Some projects require multiple teams to work in coordination.  Some projects have a static team for years.  People working in teams make it all go. 

Ok, so when I think about what it takes to make a project team work well, I look back on the projects I've worked on before.  I've been on some great projects and some real clunkers.  In all of them, I can't think of a single project that turned out well that didn't have a good team of people.

While there is a plenty to explore about the topic of project team effectiveness, let's raise the discussion up a level.  When you have a project portfoio with many projects and many teams, the question changes substantially.  And to make matters more interesting, most people are on several project teams at the same time.  So if you have 1000 people who work on projects, and each person is working on 3 projects (a VERY conservative number in my book), you might very well be looking at managing 3000 teams.  And the team configurations are changing constantly.

This simple math begs some questions: Who is responsible for the effectiveness of these teams?  How are these teams evaluated?  What are the best team configurations?  Who performs well in what circumstances?  Who performs poorly in what circumstances?  How do we create a management environment where team chemistry is constantly being improved? 

Future States Section 1c.

The term "Project" applies to so many different kinds of work that no one seems to be able to agree on what it means.  When someone says, "I'm going to be working on a new project next month," it could mean just about anything, from starting a new company to desinging a new logo. Certainly, the PMI has gone out of it's way to establish the definitive meaning of Project, but that has not exactly clarified the term "Project" in very many minds.  Very few organizations have defined what constitutes a project within the context of the organization.

The meaning seems to range from something that takes a half a day to something that takes half a decade.  It can be creative or mechanical.  A project can be something that's never been done or something that has been done millions of times.  Clearly, any discussion of Project Portfolio Management has one pressing question: what is a project?

PPM Fundamentals

After a flurry of customer meetings and consultations in the last 2 weeks, it becomes clearer and clearer to me that PPM success and adoption depend on basic principles.  These basic principles require taking a step back and understanding the variables of successful automation projects: People, Process & Technology - in that order.

1. People: Who feels the urgency and the motivation to change?  Do they have the ability to lead?

2. Process: You can't automate a process you can't define, or at least you probably shouldn't...

3. Technology: How will the technology support the needs of people and process?

As George Colony wrote in his 2002 column Naked Technology, "Deploying technology without changing process and organization will create little impact -- and it often brings negative consequences."  That said, it doesn't have to be a long, drawn out process that stalls before it starts.  Just because you address people and process before technology doesn't mean that you have to wait for the solution.  On the contrary: that allows you to get to the benefits much faster.

Future States: Section 1b

Significant undertakings demand projects that cross different skill sets and company boundaries - these projects are intended to achieve a common vision of a desired future state.

As stated in the previous section, "cross-departmental project management remains a case-by-case operation."  Furthermore, when an active project requires the collaboration of multiple departments and multiple skill sets, organizations typically lack the process capability to ensure that the project is initiated, evaluated, planned, executed and completed in a coordinated approach.  In other words, cross-departmental initiatives are challenged before they start.  Add to this single-project challenge that there are often many cross-departmental projects running at any given time.  How are these projects evaluated?  How are they planned?  How are they managed?  Who owns the success of these projects?  Who defines success?

Grass Roots Press

It appears that PPM is starting to get press at the troop level....that is a good thing and the troops will appreciate the impacts:

Quantifiable Benefits of PPM

For those who are interested in third party validation of the quantifiable benefits of PPM, check out the latest award won by Project Arena: