Introduction
If there is one concept that every organization understands, it’s that change is hard. Shifting from the comfortable way you’ve always done things to a brand-new strategy can seem like a daunting task. However, just because your traditional methodology is comfortable doesn’t mean that it is actually making things easier — or that it is efficient, sensible or profitable. And it certainly does not mean it is customer-friendly. Former General Electric CEO Jack Welch is known for advising organizations to, “Change before you have to.” Welch understood that proactive change was critical to becoming a winning organization and he enthusiastically embraced and applied the concept within his operations.
You would be hard-pressed to find a business today that still relied on a staff of typists banging out memos, bills of sale and customer communications on old-fashioned typewriters. Yet thousands of organizations still rely on similarly siloed technology and antiquated methodologies for some of their most high level operations.
One of the most surprising examples of this is found in the strategies companies use to implement portfolio management and project delivery. The project management office (PMO) is a foundational part of operations and critical to business transformation. Your PMO determines which projects are a priority, assigns deliverables and objectives, manages capacity and designates resources. Yet many organizations neglect optimization of this critical operation, resulting in lost time, money and, most importantly, customers.
This white paper will help you take on the challenge of optimizing your portfolio management strategy by leveraging the same kind of Agile concepts that have revolutionized project execution for the past decade. By embracing Agile methodologies at the portfolio level, your PMO will become the driver of responsive change in your enterprise, addressing and improving your greatest business challenges, including prioritizing customer satisfaction, streamlining alignment with corporate objectives, and developing key performance indicators for continuous success. You’ll be equipped with the responsive processes, tools and confidence necessary to transform your organization.
In this Paper:
1. Manual project and portfolio management strategies can create stalls and stops in your operations
2. Elements of successful Agile Portfolio Management
3. Deliver products, no projects, to achieve a consistent focus on value that results in desired outcomes
4. Centralizing your projects- regardless of methodology - will close the visibility gap and make everyone more effective
5. Improvement should be an ongoing process that measures actions agains results
