Think about the projects which were recently completed in your organisation.
Have any of them failed to deliver the benefits expected?
Was there constant juggling of priorities to meet constraints in your budget?
Was it a struggle for the projects to get all the resources they needed?
Were any of them behind schedule?
Did you spend time and money to get them back on track?
If you answered ‘yes’ to any of these questions, you’re not alone.
Organisations can’t afford to do everything
You don’t have unlimited resources at your service. So you have to balance your choice of change initiatives with the constraints of time and money and people’s availability.
Then, you have to make sure that the projects you decide to pursue are able to deliver the benefits you expect.
And keeping ahead of the competition probably means your list of change initiatives keeps growing.
It all points to having effective control of your portfolio of programs and projects.
And strategic portfolio management is the way to do it.
Strategic portfolio management helps you to understand the content and structure of your portfolio of change initiatives as well as their investment demand.
Once you understand these aspects of your portfolio, you can prioritise your projects and put in place portfolio controls and techniques to deliver maximum value and benefits.
We tell you how in this white paper
Download our white paper and find out how to enhance your business outcomes with strategic portfolio management.
The white paper explains how you can make the seemingly impossible, possible.
It looks at:
- the challenges of managing a large portfolio of projects in an ever-changing business environment
- what organisations need to do to effectively manage their project portfolio
- applying the discipline of strategic portfolio management in your organisation.
The white paper is free. And you don’t need to give us any personal details or join any mailing list.
How strategic portfolio management made a difference to a bank
Not convinced your organisation needs strategic portfolio management?
Here’s a brief case study to illustrate how it helped one bank.
When we first met the client, they described two major challenges.
They had very aggressive benefit targets. So they wanted to have the best mix of initiatives and activities to achieve the benefits, within their funding and resource constraints.
And for the projects that had already been initiated, they wanted to understand why so many of them were behind schedule and required corrective action to get back on track.
These are typical symptoms of managing a project portfolio, whether your organisation is small, medium or large.
So this is what we did:
- Aligned their projects, and so their investments, with their business strategy. By doing this, they prioritised the projects which contributed to achieving their business objectives.
- Developed a roadmap (or master plan) for them to follow. This gave them a corporate plan of proposed project investment.
- Balanced the portfolio for ‘do-ability’. Rather than a list of like-to-haves, they got a portfolio that could be delivered within their budget and resource constraints.
- Put together a benefits-realisation plan which we knew stakeholders would embrace. We provided them with a plan to deliver the portfolio of projects, but also a plan to deliver the benefits.
- Pinpointed and removed the blockages which were affecting the projects already underway. Their entire investment in projects was slipping badly. By analysing the portfolio, we identified and remediated the reason for the blockage, and quickly got them back on track.
Are they happy with the outcome?
They’re delighted!
The portfolio has a benefits target of $220m, which we mapped out in a 5-year journey. Eight months down the track, they’re well ahead of the target.
In addition, a can-do mentality has filtered through the group managing the portfolio. And they’ve asked us to assist them at their next portfolio-roadmapping session.
Download our white paper
Your organisation could enhance its business outcomes with strategic portfolio management, too.
Find out how by downloading the white paper. It’s free. No personal details required.
