PMOs might take a page from New York City’s war on crime, which produced a sustained drop in reported crime. By focusing on solutions instead of symptoms, then targeting the most serious strategic or execution-related pain points, a PMO is more likely to make a transformative impact.
As businesses enter the "new normal" era of economic uncertainty, program and portfolio management offices that remain tactically and administratively-focused will struggle. Successful PMOs in 2012 will move towards a strageic, holistic view that embraces agile methods and increases visibility for executives.
When implementating a program or portfolio management solution, it is better to have 80 percent of the potential users of the system (adoption rate) using 20 percent of the system functionality, than to have 20 percent of the users exercising 80 percent of the system functionality.
Managing risk at the portfolio level requires a balanced approach and the exercise of judgement, both when we create the portfolio and as we execute the projects within it. Here are some fundamental steps and key principles.
Who is responsible for tracking and capturing the business benefits of projects within a portfolio? Is it the portfolio management office, which can take a long-term view, or the project sponsors who create the business case in the first place? Here’s a comparison of these two models.
A portfolio manager’s role can vary depending on the organization. Should portfolio managers be responsible for the success of individual projects — a point person for problems and resolutions? Or should they focus on hiring good people and installing good process, leaving execution and benefit realization to the project managers and sponsors?
A wide variety of technology solutions and services are available to help organizations implement, customize and improve their project portfolio management processes. Here is our August roundup of recent updates and announcements from CA, Daptiv, Innotas, Oracle Primavera, Planview, PowerSteering, Rally and others.
Project portfolio planning efforts often stumble on seven common pitfalls, including outdated evaluation criteria and prioritization based on emotion. To avoid these missteps and produce better business outcomes, here is a best-practice framework that can be tailored to meet the specific needs of your organization.
In establishing portfolio management processes, your organization must first answer a fundamental question about the scope of the portfolio. Do you want to manage your work at the enterprise level or a departmental level?
Does your organization have the right processes in place to support the next great idea? Once an evaluation and selection framework is in place, aligning an “idea pipeline” with the project portfolio is crucial. Otherwise, your next star project might not even get a chance to soar doomed or less-promising initiatives drain resources.
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Tom MochalPresident, TenStep Inc
Tom Mochal, PgMP, PMP, TSPM is the president of TenStep, Inc. (www.TenSt…
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John D'EntremontProject Manager, PMP
John D’Entremont, PMP, is a project manager in the financial services in…
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Ty KiiselWork Management evangelist and host of TalkingWork, AtTask
Ty is a work management evangelist; “accidental” project manager and mar…
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Dave PriorPresident, ProjectWizards Inc.
Dave Prior, PMP, CST, MBA is President of the U.S. arm of ProjectWizards…
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Janis RizzutoContributing Editor, ProjectsAtWork
Janis has been writing for ProjectsAtWork for more than a decade, starti…
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Aaron SmithEditor, ProjectsAtWork.com
Aaron has been the editor of ProjectsAtWork since 2001, leading its evol…
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Last time we talked about what a great vehicle for learning social media provided. I thought it might make sense to share some of my favorite people and places in social media where you can learn f...
Posted in: The Social Project Manager
Last time we talked about what a great vehicle for learning social media provided. I thought it might make sense to share some my favorite people and places in social media where you can learn from...
Posted in: The Social Project Manager
"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" —Sir Isaac Newton
Newton is considered one of the most influential men in human history. His contributions ...
Posted in: The Social Project Manager
We've often covered "green-by-definition" projects - those where the ultimate deliverable is reduction of waste, generation of renewable power, preserving biodiversity, and so on...
Posted in: People, Planet, Profits & Projects
EPM Live provides easy to use Microsoft SharePoint Project and Work Management applications for everyone in an organization, from teams that want to work within individual workgroups, to organizations that want to utilize enterprise tools.
Innotas is a leading provider of cloud-based IT Governance, Project Portfolio Management & Application Portfolio Management solutions and has been ranked a ‘Strong Positive’ in Gartner’s 2011 MarketScope for Project and Portfolio Management Apps.
Changepoint helps businesses gain competitive advantage and increase profitability through complete portfolio visibility, planning insight, process automation, and improved resource utilization throughout a customer’s lifecycle.
AtTask: the only project and portfolio management software that meets the business intelligence needs of executives, the planning needs of managers, and the collaboration needs of project teams, helping organizations get jobs done on time, on budget.
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Ty K: "Thanks for contributing to the blog Ojiugo. There are a lot of very smart PMs ou…" on Building Project Management Knowledge with Social Media
May 14, 2012
Ojiugo A: "Excellent article,these days experience is no longer the only teacher but great …" on Building Project Management Knowledge with Social Media
May 14, 2012
Ty K: "These are all great ideas. I think retrospectives are critical for any team, eve…" on Fresh Retrospectives
May 11, 2012
Anju A: "It pains a lot when some very common review technique are termed as "Alternate A…" on Agile Code Reviews
May 11, 2012