Do You Apply The Right PPMO Methodology?

In today’s market challenges, many organizations adopt a shared resources concept with the belief that they are employing project portfolio management (PPM) offices. However, this belief is a fallacy that often starts when they consider shared resources as the critical component of PPM. This misconception is harmful to the organization’s productivity, leading to a backlog, unclear policies for service and project demands inclusion in the portfolio, resource depletion, and ineffective management of projects.

To determine if your organization suffers from these issues, a survey can be used to assess its productivity and effectiveness. The survey would include questions on topics such as backlog, policy clarity, the number of customers entering their projects into the portfolio, urgent demands, and the number of simultaneous projects. Other questions could assess resource allocation, communication, system efficiency, and productivity measurement.

Question like the below are suggested :

1. Do you have a big backlog?
2. Do you include any services/project demands in the portfolio without clear policy?
3. Do you have many customers who enter their projects to the portfolio when it comes?
4. Do you have urgent demands which suck your resources from your planned works?
5. Do you start many projects at the same time more than what you can deliver in a short time window?
6. Do you shift resources according to the urgent needs?
7. Do you merge your short period projects with long period projects?
8. Do you have small milestones you can’t deliver?
9. Do you have high rate of project’s delays causing budget overrun?
10. Do you have a problem on retaining resources?
11. Do you have different function managers?
12. Do you have cross function dependencies?
13. Do you have many meetings outside your portfolio teams?
14. Do you have integration problem within your teams?
15. Do you have silos not communicating with other disciplines?
16. Do you have fund approval problems?                                            
17. Do you have clear priority ranking?
18. Do you have system helping you to manage the portfolio?
19. Do you have KPIs to manage the teams’ productivity?
20. Do you measure outputs like you measure outcomes?
21. Do you have a project portfolio management policies?
22. Do you have project portfolio governance?
23. Do you have teams specialized on certain tasks only?
24. Do you have multitasking teams?
25. How many tasks they are working on the same day?
26. Do you focus resources to deliver a project until it finishes or working in many projects daily and weekly?
27. How many project numbers limits to work in for each resource?
28. How do you measure productivity?
29. Is your team satisfied on the productivity measuring tool?
30. Is your team satisfied on the planned time for the milestones?
31. Is your team is lacking some support to do their tasks?
32. Do you have clear project portfolio processes?
33. What project portfolio management methodology you are applying?
34. Do you encourage comments and initiative from the team?
35. Do you encourage change?
36. Does your organisation encouraging agile approach?
37. What level of accountability and authority the PPM team has?
38. When the last change initiative you did? Is it approved and executed successfully?
39. How regular you are engaging your customers on what you do?
40. Do you have a system which you can update live as one single source of truth?
41. What is your main communication tool?
42. Do you use external parties to help you delivering the projects?
43. How fast you can engage them?
44. Is it the best way to do or it is better to have skills in house to do it?
45. Are you transferring the knowledge of the external parties to your team?
46. Do you balance your portfolio between the different types of projects?
47. Do you measure the social, economical and environmental impact on your projects?
48. What is the project ranking method you are using? Why?
49. How regular do you change the priorities?
50. What policy governing the priority criteria?
51. Who is involving in the priority criteria?

I can go for more than a hundred problem during project portfolio management implementation and during Portfolio Management . Every single answer above, it shows that changing the organisation to project portfolio management mindset is a big task to do. The management with their overload of operation to deliver the urgent demands can’t cover all the issues. They usually involving a specialized external party to help them implementing the project portfolio processes, policies and governance. The trap they fall in is that the thinking that this change should happen at once with the same resources and teams they have.

Implementing PPM is a complex process and requires careful consideration of the organization’s maturity level. Trying to rush through stages puts a considerable strain on the organization and results in an inefficient system that is too complicated for the team to use. The solution is to study the organization first and then create small pilot project portfolios using available tools. In addition, teams should receive proper training, and new resources should be hired to raise competition. However, it is essential to protect new resources from established team members.

There are various economical solutions available to help the organization develop its maturity, but the best solution is to implement changes internally. This involves management’s commitment to change and staff understanding of the challenges to deliver an effective PPM implementation plan, processes, policies, and governance.

In conclusion, PPM is a culture change that requires the organization’s commitment to the change and its maturity level. Rushing the implementation process with existing resources and teams can lead to a failed system. A careful study of the organization and its needs, including pilot project portfolios, proper training, and new resources, can lead to successful implementation.

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