-
When IT Is Your Company’s “Piggy Bank”
February 10, 2012
-
4 Key Things a Project Manager Must Do
February 10, 2012
-
Essential Project Management
February 10, 2012
-
8 Traits of Top Project Managers - Part 1
February 9, 2012
-
Agile Project Management - Engaging Your Customer!
February 9, 2012
-
9 Tips to Avoid Traps in Project Planning
February 9, 2012
-
Why Projects Succeed - Executive Sponsorship
February 8, 2012
-
On Customer Participation in Agile Projects
February 8, 2012
-
A Project Charter for Lazy Teams
February 8, 2012
-
The Power of Process: How Bad Project Management Kills Great Ideas
February 7, 2012
Characteristics of PPM Success
October 17, 2007 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management
Characteristics of PPM Success
By Demian Entrekin
What are the characteristics of an organization that is ready for Project Portfolio Management (PPM)? What are the traits that indicate a successful PPM implementation?
Visibility: Organizations that understand the value of transparency are well positioned to take on a PPM initiative. If visibility causes anxiety and doubt, then the organization is less likely to embrace a PPM solution.
Standardization: An operating bias toward standarized process means that an organization no longer wants to re-invent the wheel with every project. Standard process creates predictability of execution, and if it’s done well standardization can even inspire creativity. If you follow the hero approch to projects, you may not be a good candidate for PPM.
Process Improvement: When you can define the steps to accomplish a job in a repeatable way, you have a defined process. PPM greatly enhances the ability to improve the Project Life-cycle process, which in turn enhances project outcomes. Some organizations do not define their processes, making it hard to achieve repeatability and process improvement.
Measurement: Organizations that measure how they are performing will find a significant improvement in their ability to measure how they are doing. The saying goes, if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. If you can’t see it, however, you can’t measure it. See Visibility & Process Improvement.
Accountability: In many ways, you’ve already partly achieved accountability with visibility. Once you can see who owns what, you immediately have better accountability. In the public sector, this term gets thrown around to the point of becoming meaningless. If your organization wants to achieve greater accountability, PPM will provide several ways to do just that. See Visibility and Measurement.
Focus: Organizations that want to focus their precious resources on high impact activities are well positioned for a PPM implementation. You must be ready and willing to define your priorities and make trade-offs. But if you want to get the most from your people and not burn them out, PPM will give you a framework for focus.
Change: The willingness and the ability to manage change is relevant to PPM for at least two reasons. 1. Establishing a PPM management framework will likely require some change management; 2. A PPM framework will significantly improve an organization’s ability to manage change.
There are other characteristics that are indicators of PPM readiness. There are also different ways to define the points outlined above. It comes down to this: are you ready to manage your project investments like investments? Are you ready?
Demian is the CTO of Innotas. As founder and CEO, Entrekin oversaw marketing, product development, sales and services for the company. Today, he focuses on strategic product direction. Prior to Innotas, Entrekin co-founded Convoy Corporation and was Chief Architect of its initial products. In that role, Entrekin helped the company lead the middleware market with an annual growth rate of 670 percent and played an instrumental role in Convoy’s subsequent acquisition by New Era Networks in 1999. A recognized thought leader in Project Portfolio Management, Entrekin has published numerous papers on PPM and his blog (PPM Today) explores current issues related to successful PPM implementation. During his 18 year career, Demian has assumed leadership roles as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, delivering commercial and corporate database applications. Demian holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University.
Related Articles
No comments yet.
feel free to leave a comment
Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!
XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
All fields marked with " * " are required.
- Agile Project Management
- Ask the Hut
- Certification
- Change Management
- Communications Management
- Computer Based Information Systems
- Concepts
- Corporate Transformation
- Cost Management
- Critical Chain Project Management
- Delegation
- History
- HR Management
- Implementing Project Management
- Integration Management
- Lessons Learned
- Management
- Miscellaneous
- People Issues
- PMBOK
- PRINCE2
- Procurement Management
- Program Management
- Project Lifecycle Phases
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management Advantages
- Project Management as a Career
- Project Management Best Practices
- Project Management Charts
- Project Management Definitions
- Project Management Ethics
- Project Management for Beginners
- Project Management Guides
- Project Management Musings
- Project Management Office
- Project Management Proposals
- Project Management Templates
- Project Portfolio Management
- Project Workforce Management
- Quality Management
- Requirements Management
- Risk Management
- Scheduling
- Scope Management
- SCRUM
- Soft Management
- Time Management
- Training
- Uncategorized