p3m global Newsletter

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COMING SOON | What makes p3mg different?

 

We are excited to share a project, we have been working on with one of our partners Fuse.

Keep an eye our over the coming weeks, as we share a series of clips exploring the 3 key areas to P3M capability and why they make p3mg different. 

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www.p3m.global  |  +44 (0) 1962 676 321  |  info@p3mglobal.com

Delivering Successful PMOs: Chapter 11 Lessons Learned Extract

Delivering Successful PMOs is the debut publication from p3m global, CEO, Ray Mead.

The book explores, from proven practice and live application how to do the right things, in the right way, in the right order, with the right team and identify what makes a good PMO leader.

Below is an extract from Chapter 11: Lessons Learnt.

Delivering Successful PMOs is available to buy online here

Chapter 11

Lessons Learned

The authors have certainly ‘lived’ the experience (and in fact more than one experience) of developing and deploying a significant PMO and from these experience comes the framework for a PMO life cycle as previously explained. Also from this comes a number of ‘lessons learned’ that you should consider in your own PMO development.

Lesson One: Get Help

As has been already discussed the reality out there in ‘PMO land’ is that there is not a plethora of wise and experienced PMO managers, directors, leaders, heads, etc., and so it is sensible for anyone who is engaged to help an organisation set up a new PMO or advise on improvements to an existing PMO to reach out for some help.

The risk to not doing so is to, at the very least, slow the return on investment of the new PMO down. With a practical framework for guidance, such as this book, and a supporting experience coach then the organisation benefits that have led to the PMO investment will be secured in an optimum time frame and with reduced risk of failure.

This book is aimed as one source of aid, inspiration and guidance, so ‘well done’ for starting the process with the right attitude.

In addition this is what the authors, and others, do for a living so professional consultancy is another way to improve your chances of success with that PMO project.

And there are communities you can connect to – on LinkedIn, through the project management bodies such as PMI and APM, etc. Do your research before jumping on too deeply.

Using Portfolio Management to Realise Your Vision and Achieve Strategic Goals in Today’s Turbulent and Accelerating Market Place PART 2

In part 1 we learnt about the key principles to be applied in adopting portfolio management and we eluded to the importance of appointing a Portfolio Director. 

The Portfolio Directors first task at hand will be to develop a Portfolio Strategy and Delivery Plan, which is best achieved by driving a sequential Portfolio Definition cycle and adopting the following key practices:

·         Understand what makes up the current portfolio, development pipeline, performance to date and forecast of benefits realisation,

·         Categorise the major change initiatives into groupings or segments to clarify their alignment and contribution to strategic objectives,

·         Prioritise the change investments based on cost-benefit or multi-criteria analysis to ensure optimised risk/ reward return,

·         Balance the allocation of resources, risk and returns across the prioritised change initiatives and strategic objectives,

·         Plan a top-level overview of prioritised and balanced change initiatives for inclusion in the portfolio strategy and delivery plans.

Having completed the definition cycle thoroughly, the Portfolio Director is now in a good position to oversee the delivery of the portfolio on going. Successful management is achieved by the simultaneous deployment and adoption of the following key practices:

·         Management Control achieved through defining and communicating the portfolio management processes, regularly reviewing progress against business cases at stage gates and general project and programme governance,

·         Benefits Management to establish a consistent approach, review and tracking mechanism along with actual realisation after change initiatives close,

·         Financial Management to ensure rigour of business cases and monitor spend against budget at individual initiative and portfolio levels,

·         Risk Management to focus on portfolio level mitigation above individual initiative management and protect the organisation in pursuit of strategic objectives,

·         Stakeholder Engagement, communications and feedback through a consistent approach applied across the portfolio to ensure collective buy-in and ownership for the change,

·         Organisational Governance alignment to portfolio decision making through a portfolio direction group or investment committee, and

·         Resource Management to ensure effective utilisation and alignment of people, skills, capability, facilities and equipment to attainment of strategic objectives.

Having defined and put in place the necessary practices to ensure delivery of the transformation change initiatives in service of the organisation strategy and goals, the Portfolio Director drives cross-organisation framework compliance through regular stakeholder engagement, adherence to governance and effective communications in support of an informed and energised workforce.  

The benefits of deploying Portfolio Management in today’s organisations includes:

·         Removal of redundant, duplicate and poorly performing programmes and projects,

·         Improvement of coordination of existing functions and processes,

·         Ensuring constrained resources are allocated to optimise strategic impact, coordinating delivery and maintaining strategic alignment,

·         Focused investment in programmes and projects in the context of the current environmental conditions and better coordination of investment in programmes and projects, improving the management of risk and encouraging collaborative working, and

·         Enhancing transparency, accountability and corporate governance.

Overall this ensures that the organisation is both ‘doing the right things’ and ‘doing things right’, dramatically increasing its chances of realising the vision and achieving its strategic goals in today’s turbulent and accelerating market place.

Projects Are 2.5 Times More Successful When Proven Project Management Practices Are Used

To ensure your projects are in the 89% of successful projects, as reported by the PMI in the Pulse of the Profession 2016, explore our Develop service http://p3m.global/develop

p3m global can partner with you and your organisation to develop the capabilities needed for sustainable P3M success.

Using Portfolio Management to Realise Your Vision and Achieve Strategic Goals in Today’s Turbulent and Accelerating Market Place PART 1

A lot is often said and written about the importance of strong leadership in driving organisations forward. Business schools espouse the virtues of participative management style, adopting the latest models and frameworks for addressing organisational challenges, and the power of focusing on customer centricity. 

Whilst these are all very valid and proven, they alone are not enough as organisations and their Boards come to terms with the need to apply exceptional effort in adapting to change and reinventing themselves through continuous improvement initiatives and transformation programmes.

Agility is the order of the day … new ways of working that support rapid development and delivery through management approaches hinged on prototyping and flexibility. This new order is being fuelled by a turnaround in the economy with organisational austerity on the decline, and business units, divisions and teams bursting with enthusiasm to catch-up, be competitive, get ahead and retake market share.  

But making up for lost time in the Boardroom can be dangerous if we abandon wise thinking … a caution is required before we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water … time to take stock and consider a common sense approach to managing this business turbulence and accelerating rate of change. 

Clearly, with transformation projects and programmes sprouting up all over organisations, it would be considered Best Practice and is highly recommended to deploy a proper Portfolio Management approach to leading the change, ensuring good linkage and control between strategy, utilisation of scarce resources and realisation of value through change benefits.

This should be seen as an integrated approach to driving business change and certainly undertaken in partnership with the Business-as-Usual leads, Strategic Planning, Budget & Resource allocation function, Project & Programme planning, and Corporate Governance.

A Portfolio Management approach should have senior level endorsement and commitment in order to yield it’s full potential and drive a singular view of what initiatives to pursue in the Boardroom as well as regularly tracking their progress and reporting this to the Board in support of effective leadership and timely decision making.   

The following key principles apply to adopting Portfolio Management:

• Senior Management commitment to provide a basis for prioritisation of the portfolio in line with business objectives,
•  Governance Alignment to ensure portfolio decisions are made consistently within the wider organisation structures,
•  Strategy Alignment to provide linkage between allocation of resources and strategic objectives,
•  Portfolio Office to provide timely and accurate information in support of decision making, and
•   Energised Change Culture to mobilise the organisation in pursuit of its goals.

The process for establishing effective Portfolio Management capability within an organisation starts with the appointment of a Portfolio Director and assigning this person ownership for defining and delivering this capability in service of the organisations strategic objectives.

In part 2 we will discover the value the Portfolio Director brings to the organisation and the steps this person needs to take to drive change through effective portfolio management.

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p3m global | assess

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Discover how we can help you today http://p3m.global/assess/