UMT360 Blog
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For the third straight year, UMT360 software is included in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management report. It’s just one more data point in the continuation of the growth and acceptance that UMT360’s solutions are seeing across the industry. “From record sales growth, to continued strong adoption of our software and services, to integrations with …
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Organizations have been investing heavily in business transformation projects in the hope of improving operations, increasing efficiency, and driving success. But the current trend suggests that these projects are failing at an alarming rate, with the benefits realization success rate often below 15%. This raises a series of provocative questions about why these initiatives are …
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Mediocrity in Strategic Portfolio Management(SPM) is a ticking time bomb that is threatening the success of organizations everywhere. The cost of failure is staggering, with recent studies showing that up to 70 to 90% of business transformation projects fail[i] due to poor portfolio management. This equates to billions of dollars wasted on subpar results, drained …
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Strategic portfolio management (SPM) is the process of making decisions about the selection and allocation of resources to achieve an organization’s strategies. This involves balancing the organization’s investments to maximize their potential benefits, while considering cost, capacity and risk limitations. In SPM, decisions have to take into account the organization’s immediate, medium and long-term goals. …
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With the collapse of Taylorism, which focused on task and process improvement, the natural inclination is to look for another structure to replace it. Unfortunately, there is no universal answer. Organizations must realize that they require a new paradigm that allows them to optimize across many divisions in parallel. Project Portfolio management (PPM) theory is …
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Recently, companies have shifted their attention to business transformation or optimization in order to improve their current operations and extend their opportunities. This is a significant shift, moving towards a future focus instead of attempting to get the most out of the present through disciplines like process and task optimization or reengineering. This is a …
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A recent report initiating coverage of UMT360 by 451 Research asserts that strategic portfolio management (SPM) is key in helping organizations “capture what success looks like, understand current and future states in terms of architectures and business capabilities, and align different stakeholders to get there.” The report examines UMT360’s ability to deliver SPM capabilities to …
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Bellevue, WA, February 23, 2021: UMT360 is proud to announce the acquisition of Western Principles Consulting, Inc., a leading Canadian-based Project Portfolio Management (“PPM”) consulting firm. Founded in 2005 with headquarters in Vancouver, BC, Western Principles has successfully conducted PPM implementations across Canada, including Microsoft’s PPM systems and UMT360’s strategic portfolio management software suite, in …
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Having already been positioned early this year in Gartner’s 2021 Strategic Portfolio Management Magic Quadrant, UMT360’s Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) software is now also included in a new Forrester analysis of the SPM market. Forrester’s Now Tech: Strategic Portfolio Management Tools is the second major analyst report featuring UMT360’s software, and positions UMT360 as one …
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Has any executive ever complained that they had too few projects? Most feel that they have way too many projects, and can never get them all completed. Yet having failed to deliver 100 projects for each of the last ten years they’ll still happily approve another 100 projects next year in the hope that something …
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We’ve spent a lot of time in this series of blog posts looking at different elements – the imperatives – that are driving the need for Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM). Because we believe that mastering these seemingly disparate elements is the key building a successful business. But there’s another question, one that we’ve touched on …
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We’ve been telling the world for years now that Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is the key to accelerating business transformation. And now we’re happy to announce our inclusion in Gartner’s new SPM Magic Quadrant. Gartner’s first ever Magic Quadrant on Strategic Portfolio Management has positioned UMT360 for its completeness of vision and ability to execute. …
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It’s a familiar story. You adopt Agile techniques to start delivering projects, and it seems to work well. So, you start delivering more projects using Agile, and that works well too. Sure, there are a few missteps and a few areas where it’s less successful, but you gloss over those, because, well, it’s Agile! Over …
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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 …
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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 …
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Status reports have always been the bane of every project manager’s life. Generating status reports can be a logistical nightmare, but with the right automation, it’s possible for any organization to dynamically build performance dashboards and centralize the administration of the entire process. Your status isn’t as interesting as you think it is Most executives …
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If your business doesn’t already produce 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. But when …
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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 …
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A series of blogs about Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) wouldn’t be complete without a post stressing the importance of continuous or adaptive planning. You may think you’ve heard it all before, but you really haven’t. Because what is being promoted as the concept of continuous planning, and what many organizations have tried to embrace, isn’t …
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Life used to be simple. Leaders got together once a year and set priorities for the business, and those became goals and objectives. Departments developed project proposals, with the “best” of those proposals (or the ones with the best sales pitch) approved as the initiatives that would help to achieve the stated goals and objectives. …
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Our last post introduced the concept of Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), kicking off a series of posts that will explore each of the key business imperatives you’ll need to address, and how effective SPM capabilities can help you address them. There’s no better place to start than with the most fundamental question of all – …
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When Gartner starts talking about something, people typically listen. And recently Gartner has been highlighting the importance of moving beyond the traditional project and portfolio management (PPM) approach to embrace the concept of Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM). Broadly speaking, the idea behind SPM is that you manage all execution as if it is connected to …
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A recent Gartner report offers insight into the evolving nature of PPM and the strategic portfolio management tools that program and portfolio management leaders need to effectively manage all work. This report is especially poignant to those who are tasked with driving digital transformation while also grappling with the associated challenges of managing work across …
