Strategic Planning

Operationalize strategic plans - from formulation to execution across the organization.

Strategic R&D Portfolio Management vs. Operational Capacity Planning: A Tale of Two Disciplines – Enrich Consulting

Many of my recent discussions with portfolio staff have centered around the distinctions between project management and strategic R&D portfolio management applications. Often I hear a variant of the statement “We already have/are installing a capacity planning software. It does portfolio management…why would we need a dedicated strategic portfolio system?” In reality, there are critical...

Navigating the Dashboard Minefield to Improve R&D Portfolio Management – Enrich Consulting

The use of dashboards has been spreading throughout organizations. From tracking manufacturing performance to the latest sales numbers, dashboards aim to provide a quick, comprehensive snapshot of how well an organization, business unit, or project is performing. As R&D Portfolio Management processes mature within organizations, they evolve from once-a-year budgeting activities to evergreen processes that...

Using Strategic Capacity Planning to Manage R&D Portfolio Resource Bottlenecks – Enrich Consulting

Rocks in the river When selecting projects for the portfolio, practitioners of Strategic Capacity Planning often exclusively consider financial constraints. Though the terminology varies across industries–outside costs, out-of-pocket expenditures, external expenditure–the concept is the same: money spent on something other than staff. If internal resources are considered at all, it is usually at a very...

R&D Portfolio Management and the Black Swan – Enrich Consulting

I recently read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and found the book’s central tenets relevant to R&D portfolio management. I recommend you pick up a copy yourself, but until you do, I hope the following thoughts hit the mark for you as they did for me. What is a “Black Swan?” According to...

Simple Scheduling for Your Week

Developers that work with an issue tracking system are torn between two extremes. They often would like to know everything that is happening on their project yet their main focus is on tasks assigned to them. In practice, neither an overly nosey or a hermit-like approach works well, as developers are either overwhelmed by the...