Given at the 2013 CampIT PPM conference with a focus on how to build smarter and healthier organizations through project portfolio management (PPM).

1. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Tim Washington
Camp IT Conference
March 14th, 2013
Building Smarter and Healthier
Organizations Through Project
Portfolio Management

2. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Agenda
• PPM Overview
• Leadership
• Processes
• Tools
• PPM 2.0

3. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
What is
“Project Portfolio Management”?

4. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Project portfolio management is a combination of various
management disciplines:
%Management Disciplines
General management
Business management
Project and program management

5. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Project portfolio management (PPM) is a
management discipline that drives
strategic execution and maximizes
organizational value through the
selection, optimization, and oversight of
project investments which align to business
goals and strategies.
PMI Quote
Paradigm Shift #1: Projects are an important vehicle for executing strategy

6. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
“Portfolio management is the strategy-based, prioritized set
of all projects and programs in an organization reconciled
to the resources available to accomplish them.”
Stanford Quote
Paradigm Shift #2: The single project view to a total portfolio view.

7. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
“Managing [the] composite groups of projects
with the same rigor, balance, executive
leadership, and decision-making involvement
as the company’s financial
portfolio. Portfolio Management is an
ongoing process that includes decision-
making, prioritization, review, realignment,
and reprioritization.”
Financial Portfolio Quote
Paradigm Shift #3: Projects are investments!

8. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
The Purpose of Portfolio Management
• Execute Strategy
• Deliver Maximum Value
• Enhance Decision Making
• Manage Organizational Change

9. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
At the highest level, Project Portfolio Management has four basic components:
All the steps necessary to
construct an optimal portfolio
given current limitations and
constraints
Ensure value is delivered by
comparing expected benefits
with actual benefits; drive PPM
maturity
Selected projects must align
with the business strategy and
meet other important criteria
Optimize
Portfolio Value
Project benefits must be
protected in order to deliver
maximum portfolio value
Protect
Portfolio Value
Improve
Portfolio Value
The Goal:
Maximize Value to the
Organization
Select the Right
Projects

10. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
A Pragmatic View of Project Portfolio Management
LEADERSHIP
The right leaders for:
• Determining what decisions
will be made
• Establishing which
information is needed to
make strategic decisions
• Using the data to make
better strategic decisions
• Driving accountability
PROCESS
The right processes for:
• Governance
• Portfolio optimization
• Project monitoring
• How stakeholders get
data into the PPM tool
• How to use the data to
make better decisions
TOOL
The right tool for:
• Storing project and
portfolio data
• Displaying project and
portfolio information for
general consumption
• Transforming the data for
reporting and analytics

11. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Strategic Leadership Includes:
1) Business acumen
2) Active engagement
3) Proactive view
4) Balancing long-term and short-term needs
5) Communicating a consistent message

12. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Trust
Conflict
Commitment
Accountability
Results
“The only way for teams
to build real trust is for
team members to come
clean about who they
are, warts and all”
“When there is trust,
conflict becomes nothing
but the pursuit of the
truth, an attempt to find
the best possible answer”
“When leadership teams wait
for consensus before taking
action, they usually end up with
decisions that are made too late
and are mildly disagreeable to
everyone. This is a recipe for
mediocrity and frustration”
“To hold someone
accountable is to care
about them enough to
risk having them blame
you for pointing out their
deficiencies”
“No matter how good a leadership team
feels about itself, and how noble its
mission might be, if the organization it
leads rarely achieves its goals, then, by
definition, it’s simply not a good team”
Leadership Teams

13. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Healthy organizations
start with healthy
leadership teams

14. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
“I’m convinced that if the rate of change
inside the institution is less than the rate
of change outside, the end is in sight.
The only question is the timing of the
end.”
--Jack Welch, former chairman of GE

15. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
High IQ: Expert
(Proactive)
• Shape environment to own advantage
• Organizational agility-capacity to change
• Distributed strategic intelligence
• Mind-set of change
Moderate IQ:
Competent
(Reactive)
• Debating when to change
• Keep pace and react to external change
• Clear options, criteria, and processes
Low IQ: Ignorant
(Not Active)
• Don’t realize the need to change
• Strategically blind
• Incompetent (“let’s pretend”)
Video

16. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations

17. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Strategic Planning (the big WHAT’s)
Portfolio Planning (WHEN)
Project Planning (HOW)
Smart organizations plan on many levels

18. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
We Need Clarity (aka alignment)
1) Why do we exist?
2) How do we behave?
3) What do we do?
4) How will we succeed?
5) What is most important for us, right now?
6) Who must do what?
These questions must be answered together, not in isolation

19. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Leadership Needs to Over-communicate Clarity
Problem: leaders confuse the mere transfer of information to
an audience with the audience’s ability to understand,
internalize, and embrace the message that is being
communicated.
Great leaders see themselves as “Chief Reminding Officers”

20. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Governance as
the Framework
Which Enables
Accountability
A Shared Vision
With Strategic Goals
to Demonstrate
Accountability
Leadership
to Drive
Accountability
Critical Components of Accountability

21. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
What Kind of Governance Do You Need?
PPM is only bureaucratic if you have the wrong infrastructure

22. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
What Kind of Direction Do You Need?
“Informed Intuition” Strategic Roadmap
with Metrics
Strategic Goals

23. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
LEADERSHIP
Leadership determines
what data is important
for managing the
portfolio and drives
accountability for getting
the right data.
PROCESS
The right processes
get the right data into
the system at the right
time.
TOOL
A portfolio system
stores and transforms
the data for general
consumption (reporting
and analytics).
LEADERSHIP
Leadership then
uses the data to
make better
investment
decisions at the
right time.
The Data Perspective of Project Portfolio Management
Good data is the fuel that makes the portfolio engine run!

24. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
1. Sr. Mgt.
Uses the
Data
2. Sr. Mgt.
Communicates
That the Data is
Being Used
3. Sr. Mgt.
Demonstrates
How the Data
Is Being Used
4. Data
Quality
Improves
5. Better
Decision
Making
Ensues

25. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
If the cost of putting data into your PPM System exceeds the value of
information coming out of your PPM system, then leadership needs
to re-think its processes or the organization is using the wrong tool.
Reports
Analytics
Information
Data PPM
SYSTEM
Think about it!

26. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Current
State
Future State
(expected benefit)
Actual Benefit
(post-completion)
Benefit Gap
1. What benefits are we
expecting in the future?
(business case)
2. What benefits
have we realized?
(benefits tracking)
3. How do we ensure
we realize full benefits
on future projects?
(lessons learned)
Benefits Realization Summary

27. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
PPM 2.0
Stronger
Community
Social
Collaboration
PPM 2.0 is about building
smarter and healthier organizations

28. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
For more information

29. Building Smarter and Healthier Organizations
Contact Information
@ppmexecution
http://www.linkedin.com/in/timawashington
Name: Tim Washington
Email: timw@ppmexecution.com
Web: www.ppmexecution.com