PCG provides consulting services to help companies reach their Project Portfolio Management (PPM) goals and objectives. Since the industry boom of PPM in 2006, PCG has been guiding companies through their journey to proficient and effective project portfolio management practices.
What is Project Portfolio Management?
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the methodology used to select, maintain and deliver the right mix of projects that best utilize an organization’s valuable and finite resources. Without these methods, companies may execute projects that do not align with corporate goals and strategies or continue projects that should be stopped due to scope/schedule/cost misalignment or changes in portfolio priorities.
Although PPM capabilities have become more common in the past 10 years, many organizations continue to struggle or lack the adequate processes and controls to be successful. For example, many organizations have difficulty incorporating role/resource capacity planning, allocation, and assignment.
Some companies incorporate the entire demand pipeline into their portfolio management process due to resource sharing across multiple demand types. This includes not only projects, but also service management, maintenance activities, and problem/incident management. The following core components should be considered for Project Portfolio Management:
- Capturing Ideas and other Demand
- Demand to Strategy Alignment
- Demand Evaluation and Selection
- Demand Prioritization
- Portfolio Maintenance (e.g. Stage Gates)
- Governance and Accountability
- Roles and Responsibilities
- Methodologies, Standards, and Tools
- Support Structure
- Enterprise Role/Resource Management
- Enterprise Resource Allocation
- Enterprise Capacity Planning
- Enterprise Financial Management
- Project Initiation Practices*
- Project Planning Practices*
- Project Execution Practices*
- Project Monitoring and Control Practices*
- Project Closure Practices *
*Although the practices of initiation, planning, execution, control, and closure typically fall under Project Management Office (PMO) and Project Management (PM) standards, they usually need to be adjusted for effective Project Portfolio Management practices.
HOW CAN PCG HELP?
PCG’s unique approach considers people, process and tools during our engagement. Our deep people/process change background, combined with our expertise in a variety of PPM toolsets (CA Clarity, Planview, Changepoint, MS Project Server, Microsoft PPM, Workfront - formally @Task, Clarizen) will ensure your organization successfully meets its PPM goals.
PCG works with your team to perform a current-state assessment, gap analysis, and organizational alignment for areas of improvement. We evaluate your project portfolio capabilities based on our proprietary methodology, previous client experiences, and industry best practices.
- Scope – Work with leadership to determine if the assessment scope is narrow or wide depending on specific needs. Scope may include other demand such as service management, problem management, application management, and ongoing maintenance.
- Assess – Identify and document current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats across the assessment scope.
- Report – Deliver a capability maturity score, an improvement interest score, and recommendations for each of our 75 “right-sized” capability categories.
PCG works with your leadership or identified team to define the project portfolio management goals, strategies, and future-state roadmap(s) for execution.
- Define – Establish goals and strategies based on the outcome of the capability assessment (if applicable), proprietary methods, previous client experiences, as well as industry best practices.
- Strategize– Determine approach (process), operating models (people), and technical enablers to address the defined project portfolio management goals and strategies.
- Design– Create an actionable roadmap with supporting artifacts based on the team’s alignment of capability priorities and dependencies.
PCG brings over 20 years of project management knowledge to help your company implement a project portfolio management framework that enables progressive and transformative capabilities.
- Develop – Create the project portfolio management detailed framework and processes, roles and responsibilities.
- Analyze—Create requirements and conceptual configuration design for the technical enablers (toolsets) to support the framework and processes.
- Execute – Implement people, process, and technical changes with a key focus on organizational change management, adoption, and continuous improvement.
Contact PCG today at 1.800.731.7153 to discuss your PPM needs and objectives and to schedule your complimentary discovery session.