“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, not the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”
– Charles Darwin
The speed and agility of today’s business climate continues to impact growth, creativity and sometimes leads to chaos. One only needs to study the advancements in healthcare, retail marketing, on-line insurance offerings and many other business services impacted by advancements in technology. In this digital economy banking, travelling and on-line shopping have been disrupted through innovation. For example, Netflix put Blockbuster out of business, Amazon changed hosting forever, and Google maps changed navigation for the masses, in part due to agility, creativity and innovation.
The top priority in most organizations is to grow revenue delight customers and prospects, and promote brand loyalty. The digitization economy supports these core tenets and empowers the market to interact with organizations in new and exciting ways.
Investments in technology that support the changing world we operate in are no longer an option; they are mandatory if companies want to compete and thrive. This notion leads to maintenance and operational spend – known as MOOSE – Maintain and Operate the Organization, Systems, and Equipment which traditionally accounts for 60-80% of IT spend. As mobile and digital channels become the new normal, organizational spending is changing and impacting budgeting decisions within both IT and lines of business.
New business imperatives will also need new approaches to succeed, therefore a project portfolio management tool will enable you to manage all of the chaos that is arising from the changes that are bound to continue.
A project portfolio management tool ensures, that you complete a project start to finish, having transparency and visibility, throughout the entire process creating excellent visibility. Here are some of the steps from a traditional portfolio management tool:
1. Resource Management – Capacity to deliver value
2. Portfolio Management – Selecting for the value
3. Demand Management – Feeding the funnel
4. Portfolio Review – Maintaining velocity for the best value
5. Execute – Executional excellence
The traditional portfolio management tool does not align with business today as well as it could because in some cases it’s not responsive enough in this new agile environment and we are seeing some friction. The traditional approach is based around the annual budget planning – picking and funding projects – making it very operational and project focused. Projects that end up getting picked only have a tangential relationship to strategy.
To learn more about managing the chaos of change with PPM as well as key takeaways, watch our on-demand webinar with Margo Visitacion, VP and Principal analyst at Forrester Research. Learn how to adapt, be responsive and focus on the change that is occurring.
A version of this post originally appeared on Info Tech Spotlight
