Your path to business agility
Finance and R&D can get along You’ve just finished briefing the executive committee on the methods for project valuation that you have worked so hard to establish in your R&D group. The team has finally acknowledged that risk needs to be managed in all its potential forms. You’ve reached consensus on the following set of...
Innovation is inherently risky. By definition, you’re doing something that you haven’t done before so there are no guarantees it will work. The mindset in many organizations is to “minimize” risk as if it were a disease, but it isn’t that simple. The best companies face risk head-on and manage it both systematically and transparently....
Part one of this series notes that 1) there are appropriate uses for spreadsheets in the planning process, 2) there is a key point at which spreadsheets fall short (alignment), and 3) an appropriate planning tool is one that makes the most of the strengths of spreadsheets in the data gathering process. In this blog,...
No one will argue that the economy is creating many business challenges for project based businesses. Thinner margins, slowing revenue growth, fewer projects, lower bill rates, changing customer and employee expectations, and new technology trends including the consumerization of IT are daily topics for many executives. In these rough waters, how does the successful executive...
A Look at the Findings from the 3rd Product Portfolio Management Benchmark Study: Companies are Waking Up to Ways to Streamline Product Development This year, 320 product development executives and managers across the globe shared their priorities, risks, and pain points around product portfolio management (PPM). Because this is the third study on PPM, we were...
The iPad has been a revolutionary device, bringing tablet computers from relative obscurity into the mainstream. What makes the iPad so compelling “its easily portable size and weight, fast booting, and diverse selection of applications” also makes it a great tool for project managers. Most of us are rarely chained to a desk, and fast,...
Detailed project valuations are often requested by executives, the basis being they will feel more confident in their decision making process if the accuracy of the forecasts is increased They might believe that adding detail to their valuations can accomplish this; however, this is inevitably not the case (All the NPVs are wrong, can we...
On a recent Webcast, a finance professional asked me about the use of spreadsheets in the planning process. Because this is such a common theme, (over 70% of respondents said they use spreadsheets for their planning process) I decided to add my observations to the conversation. Telling a finance person that they should not use...
In my last blog post, SRP and PSA — There IS a Difference, I discussed the major differences between Services Resource Planning (SRP) and Professional Services Automation (PSA). In short, SRP addresses the capacity and demand issues that drive resource decisions and revenue forecasting, whereas PSA focuses more on the mechanics that drive the quote...
Another striking—and often underappreciated—aspect of [Steve] Jobs’ success was his ability to say no. At a company like Apple, thousands of ideas bubble up each year for new products and services that it could launch. The hardest thing for its leader is to decide which ones merit attention. Mr Jobs had an uncanny knack of...
