Driving Portfolio Value

Portfolio Management Offices (PMOs) sometimes struggle with defining their overall value proposition to the business; to the uninitiated, project management can appear to be merely an overhead center -  driving up cost with little value return – when quite the opposite is true.

Demonstrable portfolio benefits begin by following typical strategic planning methods: start by identifying existing opportunities across functional layers and customer interfaces.  Consider areas of growth potential – where the team can improve its performance, its relationships, its communications, and its successful delivery ratio with key customers.

This is an excellent conversation to start across the team and the customer base; in fact, it can help define and shape your customer relationships, in some cases creating communications bridges where none existed.  Exploring opportunities causes other risks to surface, both threats and opportunities, so be aware of additional exposure.

Take a moment to consider the team’s strengths.  How can they be better leveraged to drive results and efficiency?  What is missing?  Are team tools appropriate?  Is the project management process known, followed, and  supported?  Does the PM process even exist?  (The last question is only half joke – the number of midsized companies that have a stale or even undefined PM process is surprising.)  So take a moment to assess your process.

There are several applicable models to the process, including SOAR (Situation/Opportunity/Action/Result) and ORR (Opportunity/Response/Result); both define starting state, actions, and desired outcomes.   It is not unusual during the discovery phase to realize the list of target opportunities, as well as to define the result, as part of the initial conversations with the customer.  The team can then determine the appropriate response to achieve (most of) the customer’s goals.

Remember that results count – choose your targets wisely.  Spending time and resources on actions or responses that bear no fruit creates frustration and disengagement among the team, stakeholders, and customers.  Define what success looks like early, and create milestones to review and refresh the goals, as well as indicate progress on the path toward results.