Stop scheduling your projects, manage your portfolio instead…
The acceleration of the transformation towards a
digital world has been a reality for several years now. The sanitary crisis the
world is currently going through with unprecedented economic and human impacts
has highlighted the need for greater adaptability and responsiveness of
companies.
Regardless of the sector, companies must
reaffirm their vision, clarify their strategic initiatives and realign their
investments.
We are entering a new era where the need to
quickly align strategic vision and execution is increasingly necessary. This is
not just a transitional phase to get out of this crisis but a long-lasting operating
model that should be adopted to face the world of today and tomorrow. One of
the levers to achieve this is the implementation of a new approach to a more
dynamic project and portfolio management.
Change of paradigm
The paradigm of the previous decade on portfolio management was a bottom-up approach, favoring the creation and management of portfolio through the consolidation, the aggregation of a multitude of projects. We are now making several observations questioning this model:
- The implementation of the operational layer of portfolio management requires a certain level of maturity, strong change management and significant effort.
- The population of project managers is changing. Compared to "career" project managers certified and trained, the new project managers are webmasters, consultants, business analysts who move into the world of project management.
- The activities to be managed in an organization are heterogeneous in their characteristics such as the delivery mode (Agile, V model), and are often already supported by an existing IT ecosystem (legacy).
- The cycle times between the consolidation of operational activities at the strategic level then the operational application of the strategic realignment can be very long and lead to latency in the organization management.
Based on this observation, we can now distinguish two complementary areas in the playground of Project & Portfolio Management (PPM):
- Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)
- Adaptive Project Management (APM)
Strategy and execution, a
complementary approach
It is therefore recommended to implement as a
first step the upper layer of portfolio management (SPM), a core-model or
common denominator that makes possible to align the execution of activities
with the business strategy. This layer provides a maximized and immediate ROI
by dynamically declining the strategic drivers of the organization at the
execution level, with a controlled effort. We therefore bring in the first
place and quickly decision support tools on the overall management of
activities with a pragmatic approach. The SPM corresponds to “Do
the right projects”.
In addition, the management of project execution is the core of the operational performance optimization. Based on the core-model, a necessary and sufficient prerequisite, the organization is autonomous to adapt the operational management of its activities as needed, on demand, depending on its maturity and its context. The compliance with the minimum portfolio management framework gives to teams a full autonomy and flexibility to manage the execution of projects, in terms of approach, depth or tooling. Thus the implementation of a PPM does not call into question the use of backlog tools. Through the APM, we are addressing to the stake of "Do the projects right".
We are therefore in a top-down portfolio management approach, supported by market PPM solutions that support the complementarity of SPM and APM. Organizations that focus exclusively on the operational component of PPM solutions are likely missing out on its ability to drive the digital transformation of the organization.
Strategic approach &
processes maturity
PPM solutions are at the crossroad of business
processes: strategic management, financial management, resource management,
project management, enterprise architecture, etc. The processes definition and
maturity are often and wrongly shown as a prerequisite for the implementation
of a PPM. This is wishful thinking because the processes are living artefacts
that evolve with the market, the context and the stakes of the organization. In
this time of crisis, we have never adjusted our processes as much as in the
past 6 months.
We therefore emphasis on the concept of the
common denominator here. Strategic portfolio management can be implemented on a
set of strong markers such as an RACI, the life cycle of different types of
activities and KPIs. Reporting is an essential aspect because management
indicators come from the requirements for structuring portfolio management.
Thus the PPM solution will anchor the management processes in the operational
model and its governance.
For example a first layer of portfolio
management, sufficient to dynamically and in real time support the strategic
alignment of project execution, could be a simple form for each of the projects
containing start and end dates, some attributes and indicators, associated with
a capacity plan at skills level. This ensures the immediacy and
dematerialization of the relationship between the project manager, the project
office and the decision-makers. Moreover, with the flexibility and autonomy of
the operational teams, we smooth out the differences in maturity at the process
level.
Dichotomy of hybrid portfolio
The challenge of an approach based on autonomy
and operational flexibility is even more critical as the portfolios are now
mainly hybrid, resulting from the cohabitation of traditional projects (V model)
with Agile products. Unlike the bimodal mode (cohabitation of homogeneous
portfolios, either traditional or agile), this hybrid world requires the
management, selection and prioritization of heterogeneous objects.
This cohabitation seems to be insoluble because
it implies the manipulation of structurally different objects, by nature,
management and content. So how do you prioritize a project versus an Agile
product? Projects are driven and managed by tracking progress, products are by measuring
value.
If this dichotomy is still little modelled or implemented, we can try to provide some answers. Here again, we will try to bring a common denominator to the KPIs, by bringing the two typologies into a field of co-management. For example, we will introduce progress indicators on products based on the backlog items as well as on the capacity of the Agile team. On the other hand, we will propose for V model projects to add the notion of value, possibly by dividing up the project.
PPM : from control to
steering
From a rigid, uniform but unitary framework,
with a bottom-up and control-oriented approach, we have moved into an opposite
paradigm. PPM solutions now serve strategic objectives from which a flexible
operational management and variable depth is applied, encouraging the autonomy
of the teams and therefore the efficiency of management. On the other hand,
they require total transparency in the management of activities.
While being less complex and less
time-consuming, implementations of PPM solutions now deliver more quickly a maximized
ROI and are an excellent receptacle for managing hybrid portfolios. The
preferred methodology for deploying PPM solutions is to start with an MVP
(Minimum Viable Product) avoiding the tunnel effect and to enhance it with
successive addition of value as the digital transformation of the organization
progresses.
There is no doubt that PPMs are reinventing
themselves and evolving with digital transformation. While some players have
already integrated various delivery and governance modes into their platforms,
they will undoubtedly have to go even further by adapting to new uses through
AI, bots, mobility, etc., by providing a complete and on-demand horizontal
(end-to-end lifecycle) and vertical (information depth) coverage.
