Key to establishing Project & Portfolio Management (PPM) in your organization

In recent years, establishing Project Portfolio Management has become a key preference for most of the organizations. There can be seen a huge change in the way organizations are managed and the narrowing of the gap between Project & Program management and top leadership.

According to a PM Solution survey, ‘Higher PPM capabilities lead to greater ROI’. The organizations with established PPM processes at the enterprise level are in a better state to make more informed and data-driven decisions on regular basis.

No doubt, the glamorous results of PPM practices establishment require time, niche skill set and organization wide adoption and support. Here’s a quick checklist that might come handy when establishing PPM practices in your organization:

1. Get the top leaders involved in identifying the critical needs and issues of the organization, and then design the processes that will best meet those needs.
2. Plan to execute the whole process in phases and decide outcome for each phase, so the effectiveness at each phase can be evaluated.
3. Keep the end users well informed about the PPM establishment and list the changes that can impact the process/way of their work.
4. Select appropriate PPM Methodology that works the best and is easy to adapt to your organization culture.
5. Decide project prioritization with top leaders and PMOs.
6. Ensure that the PPM establishment plan does not include several changes at one time, which may lead to complexity and people tend to ignore them.
7. Decide the channels for process implementation (training/hands-on/ stand up discussion, etc.,) in advance as required at each stage.
8. Document the identified processes.
9. Leverage the best from existing organizational processes and business scenarios, which are relevant to PPM. For example – Elements of processes for planning and cost estimating, project management, risk management, and resource management may need to be refined, expanded, or better coordinated instead of defining them from scratch.

These points are an initial homework for the organizations planning for PPM establishment and use.

Once this is done, you should select the appropriate PPM software/tool. You may have PMOs in your organization to drive this or you may hire an external consultant to drive the whole process for you. Now, to select the appropriate technology/tool, you must make sure of the following:

1. The solution is scalable to all PPM scenarios regardless of your needs, so you can scale your implementation in future as needed.
2. The solution follows the standards of Project Portfolio Management and at the same time should have the capability to be customized for specific needs as every organization has different standards and processes.
3. You compare the feature and pricing offered by different software/tools.
4. Select an on-cloud solution which is scalable as you use it, and will required less maintenance with minimum infrastructure; unless your organization is a big fan of on-premise solution.