This is the time of year for giving thanks and passing the turkey around family and friends. Others see this time of year as a chance to get a head start on holiday shopping and scoring deals for the gear they’ve been eyeing all year. While many are enjoying this season, project managers and PMO leaders are often stuck in a boardroom mapping out portfolio roadmaps and year ahead goals. Budgets, spreadsheets and financial reports have no place in the minds of deal seekers.
Hate may be a strong word, but project portfolio planning is not something people should dread, it can be simplified with a bit of preparation and the right combination of agility accounted for. This is when you can set yourself and your projects up for success and take the business to the next level with what is accomplished.
Collaborate Without Mayhem
Collaboration is a great place to start your portfolio planning process. Unlike negative collaboration that happens over the last Chewbacca mask, collaboration can elevate your planning process. This starts with getting input from the right people and incorporating that into the plan for the year ahead. But it doesn’t end there, keep the collaboration going and the lines of communication open as you decide on which projects warrant investment among those that should be reevaluated. Increased collaboration helps throughout the process, resulting in more than 35% of IT work being handled by join teams that are comprised of technology and business personnel. Including these types of stakeholders ensures you will be investing in projects that are the best for the business based on multiple viewpoints.
Speed is Today’s Currency
Win big during planning season by seizing the opportunity available to today’s PMO leaders:
- Focus on innovation that creates sustainable competitive advantage
- Enable project teams to deliberate less and plan in real time more
- Empower and mentor more and push decision-making to the edges of the organization
Portfolio adoption is the essence of execution. Organizations should strive to mature their portfolio by moving along the maturity continuum.
Just Keep Planning
To achieve your goals, it requires strategic alignment, a strong portfolio plan and agility.
55% of CIOs state aligning IT initiatives with business goals is the #1 priority (cio.com)
32% of companies blame project management failure primarily on poor estimation during the planning phase (PricewaterhouseCoopers)
53% more successful projects and strategic initiatives for enterprises with organizational agility (PMI.org)
#1 CIO priority is business transformation and helping the business perform. Focus is trying the business with IT strategy. (Gartner)
Planning targets the most fundamental requirements of why a PPM tool is needed – you are able to manage your resources and project the pipeline. However, it also comes with challenges. The whole approach of portfolio selection and resource planning is exceptionally manual and labor intensive, with insufficient time and resources it is difficult to plan everything with the up most accuracy. What you need to do is automatically align and predict the best project roadmap that can be accomplished with the available resources.
There are many benefits to using planning tools, Predictive Portfolio Analysis is one of them, that will help ease your planning process and relieve the burden of annual portfolio planning. This helps:
- Maximize your resources by sophisticated utilization of current resources
- Improve stakeholder relationships by alignment coupled with realistic and accurate forecasting
- Save time and money by using fully automated predictive engine
To learn more about how NOT to hate project portfolio planning watch the full webinar. This year, skip the lines and the boardroom.
