Archive for the ‘strategic portfolio management’ tag

Why do you invest in projects and programs?  A simple question, but one that many employees likely can’t answer.  All investments are made to generate an outcome.  Whether that’s financial, reputational, regulatory, or any other category label you want to apply, every investment – in projects, programs, products, capabilities, technologies, et al has to produce a meaningful outcome or it fails.

In an earlier post, we looked at roadmaps, something that has been getting a lot of attention in the last couple of years.  Most will agree that roadmaps need to have substance behind them and their purpose is to improve your ability to run your business and make key decisions.  And perhaps most importantly, they must have the ability to support portfolio analytics.

Since project management first became a formal discipline, status reports have been the bane of every project manager’s life.  Team members hate having to stop their work to update them.  Stakeholders doubt the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of them.  PMOs feel as though they spend way too much trying to corral them.  And leadership largely ignores them.

If your business doesn’t already some roadmaps, then you probably feel as though you should have them.  Because that’s what everyone seems to be been talking about – you have to have roadmaps, you can’t manage your business without roadmaps, roadmaps will unlock your strategic potential.  And on, and on, and on.

It may be a cliché to say that people are your most important asset, but when it comes to Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), that’s exactly what they are.  So far, we’ve considered the different ways work gets done, the different models for delivering on strategy, and the need to continuously adjust and adapt your plans to shifting circumstances and emerging opportunities.  But regardless of how well any of that happens, you only deliver through the work that people do.