Making It All Happen

The six steps I have been illustrating over the past six weeks are all fairly straight forward and very achievable, but they will take some time. However help is at hand:

Resources
I have mentioned the resources provided by the Project Management Institute and the Office of Government Commerce (now Axelos) but there are also some of my books that provide a more straight forward alternative:
 

If you want detailed guidelines for the implementation of all the things I’ve been talking about, they are all set out in Project Program and Portfolio Management in easy steps.

If you want guidelines for developing project management excellence, they are set out in Effective Project Management in easy steps.

If you are running agile project, then guidelines for developing agile project management excellence are set out in Agile Project Management in easy steps.

And last but not least if you are wondering where you will find the time to do it all then Effective Time Management in easy steps will provide you the answers.

So draw up a list of what you want to achieve and plan and manage the project like any other major business change. I say project but it could require a program (unless your organisation is already a good way up the capability maturity matrix) as it is likely to take several years to implement fully (and that by definition that should be a program not just a project).

Your Mission

I would like to leave you with one final point to consider: without the full commitment of your organisation (and that really does mean support from your very top management) none of this will happen, so I would suggest that’s your starting point. 

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to produce a high-level plan for what you want to achieve, then sell the benefits of these best practices to your organisation. If you need any help I am always pleased to offer help or advice to fellow professionals and this is the URL of my web site should you wish to contact me: johncarroll.org.uk

Step 6: Portfolio Management Deployment

The final step in the deployment of best practices is the big one, portfolio management. Not many organisations have yet achieved this, so this is the area that can deliver real competitive advantage to any business.

Yet again it is absolutely essential to involve all the project and program managers in the process and yet again the steps are similar to those involved in deploying project or program best practices, with one main exception at step 2:

Step 1: Define and document a standard portfolio life cycle. This is my own particular take on a portfolio life cycle diagram:

Step 2: Set up a central project database, which is essential to the process.

Step 3: Define the portfolio management processes to support the portfolio life cycle. These can be based on off-the-shelf standards such as the PMI's Standard for Portfolio Management, OGC's Management of Portfolios or a good book on the subject (such as my own Project Program and Portfolio Management in easy steps). This will put you on level 2 of the CMM matrix for portfolio management.

Step 4: Establish a portfolio office to maintain and develop the processes, or develop the program or project office into the role. This will put you on level 3.

Step 5: Define portfolio reporting standards and metrics and transfer them to the portfolio office to implement, support and maintain. This puts you on level 4.

Step 6: Task the portfolio office with optimising the processes and standards, which takes you to level 5.

Next week I will look at making it all happen, some resources you can use and how to go about it.