Download Formalize Project Portfolio Management for Small Enterprise Sample

Formalize Project Portfolio Management
for Small Enterprise
Make big gains in small steps.
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1997Research
- 2015 Info-Tech
Research Group
1997-2015
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Group Inc.
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Our understanding of the problem
This Research is
Is Designed For:
This Research Will Help You:
 People who run or work in IT departments with
 Formalize a PPM practice that makes sense
10 or less people and who need to action a
PPM solution immediately, without drawn out
deliberations or formal approval from senior
executives.
for a group of your size.
 Configure a lightweight multi-user PPM tool to
help you track and monitor the portfolio.
 IT departments of 10 or less people who are
look for a lightweight PPM tool to help facilitate
their nascent PPM process.
This Research Will Also
Assist:
Assist:
This Research Will Help You:
Them:
 Executive stakeholders in companies with
 Gain control of the project portfolio while
small IT departments.
recognizing that the small IT department still
has to keep the lights on and support the end
users.
Info-Tech Research Group
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Executive Summary – PPM for Small Enterprise
Situation
Info-Tech Insight
• You need to increase manageability and value of IT projects.
• As a small enterprise IT leader, you need PPM tools and processes
1. Adopt PPM processes that match
your organization’s maturity. Unless IT
has the resources and discipline to
implement a rigorous PPM framework, the
best approach to portfolio management is
through a light-weight set of processes
that align with your current capabilities.
suitable for teams in fast-paced, rapidly changing, interruption-driven
environments.
Complication
• Almost all PPM tools and processes are aimed at mid-to-large-sized
•
enterprises, not small enterprises.
While you would like to get more strategic at PPM, you feel as though
you lack the time, budget, and staff that this would require. Indeed, your
team is constantly in firefighter mode, and imposing additional
administrative overhead onto them is not an option at this time.
2. Emphasize interaction over
documentation. The job of a PPM tool is
to facilitate and support conversations and
decisions. Organizations fail at PPM when
updating and maintaining data in the tool
becomes the end in itself.
Resolution
• Take a “crawl-walk-run” approach to developing PPM capabilities.
◦
◦
◦
First, establish portfolio visibility to increase awareness of work in progress and enable more effective project decisions.
Second, track and manage resource capacity to right-size project intake.
Third, optimize project throughput to increase efficiency and value delivered by IT projects.
• Use Info-Tech’s spreadsheet-based PPM templates to quickly implement an easily usable and affordable PPM solution.
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Get the right projects done at the right times with PPM
Project Portfolio Management
(PPM) is a set of processes that
helps the organization:
•
Prioritize the most valuable
urgent projects.
•
Allocate the right resources at
the right times.
•
Help decision makers stay
informed and make decisions
around project in flight.
•
Ensure that projects are
completed in a way that
maximizes benefits in relation to
costs.
42
out of
45
PPM is the third least effective IT
process (out of 45) among InfoTech’s small enterprise members.*
IT teams with fewer than ten members face unique challenges around
portfolio management.
•
Priorities are informally, subjectively defined.
•
Urgent incidents and requests constantly take resources away from
projects, causing the team to go from one emergency to the next.
•
The organization has few or no full-time project managers to plan
and manage large initiatives.
•
A lot of project work is outsourced, making the organization
dependent on external providers to get things done on time, in
scope, and within budget.
This blueprint provides a set of practical, tactical tools and guidelines for establishing highvalue, low-effort PPM capabilities.
*Info-Tech Research Group PPM Current State Scorecard, 2015; N=44
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Portfolio management needs a strategy or operating plan
A PPM strategy is essentially a series of responses to questions elicited at each phase of a project. These questions
must be answered at the portfolio level. Your answers to these questions will help constitute your PPM strategy or
operating plan.
Who can request a project? How?
Who decides what to fund?
How will they decide?
Intake
Who reports on project
status? When? How?
Execution
Who assigns the resourcing? Who feeds them the data? How do
we make sure it’s valid? How do we handle contingencies when
projects are late or availability changes?
Who declares that a project is
done? Who validates it? Who is
this reported to?
Closure
Are we tracking the projected
benefits from the original business
case? How?
This blueprint will help you define the answers to these questions with a right-sized PPM strategy.
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Portfolio management is not project management
For small organizations especially, portfolio management requires a set of tools and
processes that are distinct from those of project management.
Project portfolio management is not simply
about managing a lot of projects.
While project management (PM) and portfolio
management (PPM) originate from a similar set
of challenges, and are driven by the same guiding
principle – i.e. the successful execution of
projects – they are separate disciplines with
distinct goals and processes.
Equating the two and mistaking portfolio
management for “project management on a larger
scale,” is a common symptom that contributes to
the failure of PMOs.
Doing things right vs. doing the right things.
Where project management practices seek to
deliver projects on time, on budget, and in scope,
PPM is a set of processes that can help ensure
organizations are working on the right projects.
“Right” in this context can depend on a number of
factors, including resource capacity, strategic
goals, and stakeholder needs.
In order to succeed, PPM processes require a
clearly articulated set of goals, as well as
widespread adoption throughout the organization.
There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.
– Peter Drucker (quoted in Lessing)
Project management is about doing things right. Portfolio management is about doing the right things. This
blueprint will help small IT departments with the latter.
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Unique challenges of small organizations require unique
approaches to PPM
While portfolio management is about doing the right things,
“right” can be particularly hard for small IT shops to
determine.
In fact, in most cases, small IT shops simply get told by senior
management that a project needs to get done, and regardless
of capacity or the feasibility of the concept, it is up to IT to
“figure it out.”
Any effective PPM solution needs to take into consideration
the unique challenges small enterprises face around project
and portfolio management.
“It’s a perpetual problem. IT
department sizes are small. There
aren’t enough hours in the day to
accomplish everything, and it feels
like the problem is getting worse.”
– Joe Stangarone, “7 Ways Small
IT Departments Can Accomplish
Big Things”
Operational demand often trumps
project work
It is hard to plan and establish project discipline when,
from one week to the next, there is little predictability
regarding how much time staff will be able to devote to
projects.
Limited visibility
With too many projects on the go, and requests
constantly being added to the queue, it can be tough to
establish a reliable picture of all the work in progress.
Staff don’t have the luxury to focus
on one thing at a time
Staff at all levels of IT are commonly required to play
multiple roles within the department on any given day.
Time hasn’t been allocated to staff to
manage projects
The appetites of senior management far outpace their
propensity to invest in project management time.
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PPM solutions aren’t working for small organizations
Unfortunately, most PPM tools are created with large, enterprise clients in mind.
This leaves the largest portion of the market – small organizations – with overly complicated
PPM tools, and advice that is mismatched to the everyday challenges they face.
Indeed, low adoption shows that commercial PPM tools are difficult and costly to implement.
Info-Tech Insight
67%
Of Info-Tech clients use a home-grown PPM tool
Only 16% use a commercial
PPM tool
17%
Don’t have a PPM solution
16%
You need to establish PPM discipline
before you can succeed with a
commercial tool.
A simple spreadsheet-based tool can
make things easier while you build the
processes you need to support a more
sophisticated solution.
Fortunately, an effective PPM strategy doesn’t require expensive tools, sophisticated infrastructure, or adherence to
complex frameworks. What’s needed for effective PPM is simply a strategic approach to executing projects, driven by
well-defined processes that are clearly communicated and enforced throughout the organization.
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There is a strong correlation between PPM best practices and
project success
Info-Tech has identified correlations between certain responses (across 58 in-scope PMOs) in an
effort to predict the common scenario for success managing a project portfolio.
Productive project work
0.6
0.5
Our study showed strong
correlations between “Clarity
of Business Goals” (0.47)
and strategic “skillsassignment” matching (0.45)
to fostering of more
productive project work and
reducing portfolio waste.
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
Productivity of Project
Teams
Correlation
Customer clarity of
business goals
Project resourcing is
optmized with the best
skills-assignment matches
Info-Tech Research Group PPM Current State Scorecard, 2015; N=58
More governance isn’t the solution to project success. Our diagnostic results show that portfolio-level
functions around reporting, resource management, and organizational strategy are the best practices to cultivate to
ensure project success. This blueprint will help small organizations with all three.
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Info-Tech’s approach to PPM combines leading schools of
thought with practical, tactical insider research
Governance frameworks such as COBIT and
ITIL:
Project Management Frameworks such as
PMBOK and Prince2
Why they’re essential: They offer essential advice on the
alignment of IT strategy and business strategy.
Why they’re essential: They offer crucial advice on the
role of the PMO as an intermediary between the project and
executive levels.
Where they fall short for small organizations:
• They start from the assumption that IT and the businessside exist on an even plane. In truth, small IT shops are
there to “serve” the needs of the business and do not
usually play a role in agenda setting.
Where they fall short for small organizations:
• They present a view-from-above portrait of PPM that
doesn’t ring true for most small IT shops, which struggle
to attain visibility not “from above,” but from the trenches.
• Further, these frameworks assume that organizations will
have and spend the necessary time to follow them.
• Further, these frameworks assume that organizations will
have and spend the necessary time to follow them.
Why our approach fits the small IT department better:
Our approach equips small IT departments with the
processes to manage stakeholder relations and interject
their voices when the business side is setting priorities.
Why our approach fits the small IT department better:
Our approach takes into account the realities that our SE
members are facing and offers a simplified, less processheavy path towards portfolio visibility.
“ITIL calls for a very structured team approach,
and it wouldn't work for us in our small shop…
We'd just be adding a layer of complexity on the
shoulders of those already tasked with keeping the
lights on.”
– Steven Porter, CIO, Touchstone
Behavioral Health (quoted in Caretta)
Info-Tech Insight
Unless IT has the resources and discipline to
implement a rigorous PPM framework, the more viable
approach is to implement a set of lightweight
processes and tools that match your department’s
resource capacity and capabilities. You can introduce
more rigor as your capability level matures.
Info-Tech Research Group
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Take a “crawl, walk, run” approach to building PPM capability
This blueprint will help you define and implement a PPM operating plan suited for your
capability level.
A
Establish Portfolio
Visibility
B
Manage Resource
Capacity
C
Optimize Project
Throughput
Implementing this will allow you to:
Implementing this will allow you to:
Implementing this will allow you to:
Report and manage the status of
projects in flight.
Prioritize and schedule projects
with the most appropriate
resources assigned.
Enable more projects to get done
on time, on budget, and in scope.
PPM benefit achieved:
PPM benefit achieved:
The PMO and decision makers will
be in a better position to determine
what projects are adding value to
the organization and which ones
are not.
Improve efficiency and
effectiveness across the portfolio to
reduce the waste caused by
cancelled, delayed, and zombie
projects.
PPM benefit achieved:
Improve stakeholder satisfaction
and increase the organizational
capital of your nascent PMO.
Taking on too much at once is a recipe for PPM failure. Info-Tech’s tiered approach allows small IT
departments to introduce achievable increments of change over time, helping to ensure that foundations are
strong before trying to implement more sophisticated processes.
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