Future States & Project Portfolio Managment

Why Project Portfolio Management Changes the Game…

"You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you." – Heraclitus

1. Organizations create their future states through projects & project clusters – the emerging term for this discipline is Project Portfolio Management .
   1. Historically, projects have been managed as stand-alone, temporary entities rather than a steady flow of connected investments in an unfolding future state – this is changing right now.

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

   3. Organizations struggle with understanding project fundamentals, such as “what is a project?” and “what does a successful project look like?”

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

    2.  Chain-of-command management structures are insufficient mechanisms for creating future states and often create barriers to value creation.

1. Projects and project clusters function as cross-departmental organizing structures and they often operate across chain-of-command management boundaries
2. The single largest barrier to achieving desired future states lies in the failure of chain-of-command management structures to enable collaboration across departmental boundaries
3. The key components of organizational progress:

                                                              i.      Compelling vision of the future state

                                                            ii.      Collaboration across skills

                                                          iii.      Clear plan to achieve the vision

                                                           iv.      Adjustments to a, b & c along the way

3. Organizations tend to be organized into departments that contain skill families such as Sales, Operations, Finance, R&D, Marketing, etc., and these departments must collaborate relative to goals.
1. There appear to be very few individuals who feel the necessity of cross-departmental collaboration toward achieving desired future states
2. Departments are often characterized by turf battles rather than collaboration – in the middle lies ambivalence
3. Organizations that successfully orient themselves around project performance will out-perform organizations that orient themselves around department performance