CEO Model for Project Portfolio Success

By Erkan Gulec and Svetlana Vityugova

Project Overload and Benefits Realization Failure

Is your company struggling to get projects completed?

Do you have too many inflight projects, limited resources, ineffective communications and limited business benefits realization?

What is your confidence level that your organizational culture will withstand the next disruption?

TBM Partners is a team of expert advisors focused on helping our clients launch successful, technology-enabled change programs and drive maximum business value realization. There are significant human and financial capital at risk in your current situation.

In our experience, there are three key inter-dependent disciplines that are necessary to drive project success:  Project Portfolio Management, Project Management, Organizational Change Management enabled by Culture.

Project Portfolio Management is about selecting the right projects and ensuring that your organization has the required resources to complete them. [Critical Insight] We recommend you focus on determining the capacity for projects, improving the project intake process and creating a balanced and sequenced portfolio of approved company projects. Projects may be the problem in your organization, but neither the latest project management software nor the project management rigor is the only solution. Instead, spend time strategically assessing your portfolio, prioritizing and sequencing key projects.

Project Management is the practice of planning, executing and closing projects. [Critical Insight] We observe companies spending huge efforts in gathering comprehensive and detailed project data rather than focusing on determining necessary reporting metrics, creating pragmatic work breakdown structures and documenting a fit-for-purpose project change request process with constant status updating that you can maintain.

Organizational Change Management aims to ensure that the projects are adopted by your organization. [Critical Insight] It is imperative to be clear about the expected change for any project upfront in order to maximize the benefits to be realized by each project. If you decide to skip or postpone the change impact assessment, you are likely to fall victim to a sunk-cost bias when the project should be cancelled. In order to avoid this situation, we recommend you focus on assigning accountability for change, assessing the level of organizational change management required for project upfront, and crafting a compelling message to key stakeholders.

Culture is proven to be a number one barrier to effective collaboration based on 4 years of research by *MIT, Deloitte, and other academic institutions. 89% of leaders think culture has a direct impact on bottom line (cost, producti, revenue, etc..) and it definitely has a significant impact on the project’s success.

How are you measuring your current cultural gaps that will enable your organization to drive successful change?

As a business leader, you need to ensure that cultural conditions are in place to support the change. Unfortunately this is more difficult than to identify the tangible and practical things that are needed. This means equipping people with the motivations and attitudes to engage with the change and make it work. If this is neglected - people will resist the change, fail to adopt new ways of working and your project will be unsuccessful. In order to remain competitive, an organization needs constantly to evaluate its values and practices to ensure they are aligned with corporate strategy.

TBM Partners has transformation tools to identify hidden dynamics of culture, make them visible and helps to initiative action plan to create a more effective organization.

CEO Model for Project Portfolio Success

To drive successful project throughput, you need to focus on three key actions

1. Choosing the right projects with project portfolio management

2. Executing the right tasks with project management and resource allocate

3. Operationalizing your projects with organizational Change Management and Culture Building.

At TBM Partners, we are ready to offer various levels of support to best suit your needs.

• If you have the time and capability, but you need some guidance along the way, Do It Yourself (DIY) Toolkits would be helpful

• If you know that you need to fix a process, but need assistance to determine where to focus, Guided Implementation with some check-ins along the way will help keep you on-track

• If you need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately, Workshop or facilitated Change Management offering is available

• When you are ready to measure and identify your current cultural gaps that will enable your organization to be more successful in delivering your strategy, we can support your leadership team with our Culture Diagnostic and Design Program.

• Finally, if your team does not have the time and expertise to take this project on, our expert advisors and partners can provide the necessary leadership and guidance through the complete project lifecycle.