Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Data management is a critical function, but busy project teams don’t have the time or skills to stay on top of it. Though information is harvested and reviewed at the project level, rarely is data rolled up in a way that makes it possible to identify opportunities and inefficiencies on a broader basis. This leads to resource conflicts, waste, and last-minute surprises and emergencies that could have been avoided.

Executives often don’t have good visibility into where projects are having problems, even when the difficulties are serious enough to impact other efforts within the portfolio. Communication strategies aren’t always robust enough to ensure the leadership team is aware of emerging challenges, and status reports may not highlight those problems that require executives’ attention. Unless senior management makes a concerted effort to stay on top of issues, they likely don’t have enough knowledge about the health of their portfolio to make the best strategic, operational, and financial decisions.

Few companies have a process for reviewing their entire project portfolio. This leaves the executives in the dark when it comes to evaluating how well the team is delivering its projects. Without a proven project portfolio management methodology and analysis strategy to guide them, organizations spend time and money fixing the same problem over and over, and never have the information necessary to improve their long-term performance.

Businesses don’t always have the project management proficiency and related tools to create and maintain accurate project plans. As inconsistent planning and control methodologies are used across the portfolio, any deficiencies in skills or expertise are magnified. The result? Big gaps in the organization’s approach to risk management, missed opportunities to allocate resources effectively, poor communication between project teams, and higher expenses to maintain standalone project silos in different functional areas within the company.

THE SOLUTION

With deep experience applying its time-tested methodology across diverse portfolio structures, PMAlliance is a project management consulting firm that partners with organizations to help them successfully evaluate, oversee, and improve their project portfolios. With our unique combination of proven methodology, certified facilitators, and special portfolio tools, we provide our clients with quick visibility into the status of each project in their portfolio.

Our background in portfolio management enables us to work alongside senior leadership teams to ensure decision makers understand where risks, benefits, and opportunities exist throughout the array of projects that are underway or on deck. Together, we can make your project management efforts as efficient as possible, with an emphasis on maximizing your ROI and achieving repeatable project success. Using our portfolio management methodology, your team will have the foundation necessary to leverage a common approach to project management. This drives accountability, provides for tightly disciplined progress and timeline monitoring, and cements healthy communication flows between project teams, portfolio managers, and the executive staff.

THE BENEFITS YOU CAN EXPECT WITH PMALLIANCE

Healthy Communication Flows

Information sharing will be optimized to avoid roadblocks presented by traditional silos and other functional barriers. Executives will be alerted to emerging problems, providing adequate notice to reallocate resources or approve other solutions while the project team still has time to apply cost-effective fixes. There won’t be any last-minute surprises or fires to put out.

Expert Resource Management

Planning efforts will be conducted using a common strategy for every project, resulting in plans that are accurate and comprehensive. Finite internal and external resources can then be managed across the entire project portfolio, thus proactively eliminating conflicts and enabling the organization to take advantage of opportunities to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

Timely ROI Insight

You will know how each project in your portfolio is performing. With awareness around which initiatives may be falling behind expectations, you will have the ability to postpone or eliminate projects to maximize portfolio performance and ensure every effort supports the organization’s strategic objectives.

Comprehensive Data Management

You will know your organization is gathering and analyzing key project metrics using one common approach to data management, with consistency and objectivity as priorities. Everything from initial planning functions to ongoing progress reporting will be measured uniformly.

Consistency Across the Entire Portfolio

With a portfolio management strategy in place, you will know that a common project planning and control methodology is driving every initiative. Schedule development, risk assessments, resource allocations, progress reporting, data analysis activities, and quality improvement efforts will be consistent across every project.

Access to the Latest Project Status

You will have on-demand access to status reports at all times and you will also receive formal reports once a week. The Executive Dashboard will be available to you for reviewing the status of key projects and other portfolio information.

Project Portfolio Management Done Right

You will have a portfolio management methodology that delivers real value to the organization. Processes will be in place to evaluate the health of your portfolio, to identify risk areas and opportunities, to compare progress and performance across individual projects, and to drive continuous improvement.