Overload has become a way of life as firms struggle to manage a barrage of projects in an attempt to meet increasing marketplace demands. All too often, that overload leads to project paralysis.<\/p>\n
In one division of a large manufacturing company, a scheduled, high-priority project was never actually completed. A project manager at a mid-size service organization confesses he rarely meets a deadline on large projects because time-consuming, low-priority activities keep getting dumped in his lap. A pharmaceutical company lags behind the industry because there are not enough of the \u201cright people\u201d to complete its most critical work.<\/p>\n
The scale and number of projects underway has outstripped the organization\u2019s ability to manage them. Leading business journals continue to tout projects as a way of life, but in many companies, today\u2019s project management effectiveness is in a precarious state. Not only projects, but also business performance is jeopardized when organizations take on more projects than they can handle.<\/p>\n
Consider the medical device industry, where time-to-market is a crucial determinant of profitability. A pharmaceutical leader dominated the industry with an innovative stent for cardiac surgery. Despite a significant advantage over smaller, slower competitors, its inability to create a systematic process for managing product development resulted in a critical loss of market share.<\/p>\n
In a growing economy, the name of the game may not even be market share. The new equation is simple: faster, faster, faster. Yet whether an organization has been intentionally streamlined, or weakened through fierce competition for skilled knowledge workers, the resources to get there first may be all-too-scant.<\/p>\n
This means that project management is everybody\u2019s job. Designated project managers are trained in sophisticated software tools, but those tools are often too complex and cumbersome to use effectively. Projects are initiated at any and every level of the organization\u2014and once initiated, take on a life of their own. Some are started and never finished, while low-value projects sap resources from critical initiatives. Most critically, executives at the top find it difficult to view a roll-up of project activity that helps them make the tough decisions.<\/p>\n
Perhaps more so than at any time in business history, organizations find themselves dangerously overextended. They start multiple projects with limited resources\u2026in flattened organizations\u2026without common logic or language\u2026and no clear framework for establishing priorities. These organizations need a way to balance what they want to do with what they can do in a given time frame.<\/p>\n
The project proliferation disease is spreading fast. Top management wants to get a lot done, now\u2014and others don\u2019t hesitate to throw additional \u201chigh-priority\u201d projects into the hopper. Corporate executives may not make the connection between \u201cproject glut\u201d and its depleting side effects; they only know that employee morale is low and project delivery dates are chronically late.<\/p>\n
The wear and tear of project proliferation in an organization may be characterized by these other symptoms as well:<\/p>\n
A look beyond the symptoms reveals the root causes of the proliferation syndrome: an informal or inadequate process for initiating projects; unfocused or \u201cmoving-target\u201d project priorities; inconsistent or poorly-executed project planning, resource allocation, and implementation.<\/p>\n
The truth is, any organization\u2019s resources are limited. One way or another, only certain projects will get done. The choice is whether this happens arbitrarily\u2014or deliberately.<\/p>\n
To build a successful financial portfolio, investors first articulate their strategic financial objectives. They weigh the relative merits of investment alternatives, characterizing the risks and benefits of each. They analyze exactly what resources are available for investment and determine how they will be allocated among alternatives. Careful measurement of the portfolio\u2019s success against the strategic yardstick is ongoing. When returns accelerate or diminish, investors make the tough calls in order to maximize return over the long haul.<\/p>\n
Building a project portfolio in today\u2019s organizations requires no less. A systematic method for evaluating the organization\u2019s project investments is critical. Such an approach tips the balance from the depleting effects of project proliferation to project productivity and company profit.<\/p>\n
What might such a cure look like? In an automotive manufacturing plant, typical for its size and industry, senior executives assessed the merit of 135 projects. Project task lists, resource and staffing requirements, and other relevant information were summarized. Following a rigorous two-day decision session, where each project was evaluated against eight strategic objectives, the final \u201cmust-do\u201d list of projects was dropped to 35. The implementation plan called for rigorous project management techniques, including monthly variance reports to the plant staff. The result? Most of the designated projects were successfully completed during the following year, leading to a jump in the division\u2019s productivity, product quality, and revenue.<\/p>\n
Six steps are common in project portfolio initiatives:<\/p>\n
A mobile phone manufacturer rested (quite uncomfortably) at the bottom of its industry segment in profitability rankings. The projects in its portfolio were intended to bring new products to market quickly. Critical company resources were shared across projects, from high-level research to essential regulatory documentation. Project proliferation had slowed product development and rollouts, while raising the level of frustration in the company.<\/p>\n
Analysis revealed a bevy of bottlenecks, not the least of which concerned the fast-dwindling population of a critical human resource, their \u201cbench technicians.\u201d When the project leadership team reviewed upcoming project requirements with resource managers, they discovered that if they didn\u2019t fill critical positions now, many of their current projects would screech to a halt within six months.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, this stimulated the implementation of a full-blown project portfolio management process. Many other critical resource concerns were identified, forcing the company to re-prioritize projects and reallocate resources.<\/p>\n
Within six months of instituting the project portfolio process, the organization skyrocketed from \u201ccellar-dweller\u201d to champ. They reached the top in industry profitability, having doubled the rate of new products to market. The CEO attributed their success to the Kepner-Tregoe (KT) project portfolio engagement. In fact, he called it \u201cthe best thing he had ever seen\u201d in the industry.<\/p>\n
KT\u2019s unique strengths ensure that our project portfolio management approach helps organizations achieve these results:<\/p>\n
For nearly fifty years, KT has been a pioneer in the field of decision making. Whether theirs is one of the 500 senior executive teams we\u2019ve worked with to formulate strategy, or their employees are among the more than five million trained in KT Decision Analysis or Project Management, businesses have found that our techniques strike an effective balance between practicality and accuracy.<\/p>\n
KT has worked on project portfolio engagements with companies in the aerospace, telecommunications, manufacturing, consumer products, pharmaceutical, and financial service industries worldwide. KT methods have also been applied in project contexts to manage costs and evaluate work value.<\/p>\n
KT\u2019s approach to project portfolio engagements is built on the core strength of our proprietary Decision Analysis process. Decision Analysis is a critical thinking tool built on systematic questioning that guides thinking and helps organize information and judgments. Its steps\u2014Clarify Purpose, Evaluate Alternatives, Assess Risks, and Make Decision\u2014ensure that individuals and groups share common ground in successfully choosing among actions to produce desired results.<\/p>\n
KT has researched, documented, and helped organizations apply these and other rational processes to their most critical business issues since the 1950s. With these processes in hand, it becomes possible to improve the critical thinking capabilities of managers and workers as they go about their most vital tasks. By thinking through the purpose of action before choosing alternatives, by examining possible causes before fixing a problem, by building in success before taking action, organizations develop a powerful tool for communicating and collaborating on the best issue resolutions.<\/p>\n
Over the last four decades, Kepner-Tregoe\u2019s proprietary analytical processes have been employed\u2026<\/p>\n
Overload has become a way of life as firms struggle to manage a barrage of projects in an attempt to meet increasing marketplace demands. All too often, that overload leads to project paralysis. In one division of a large manufacturing company, a scheduled, high-priority project was never actually completed. A project manager at a mid-size […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":38127,"template":"","white-paper-type":[],"class_list":["post-38126","white-paper","type-white-paper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n