We know the challenges executives may encounter when supporting several important projects simultaneously. In addition to the attention and commitment needed to execute multiple concurrent efforts, leaders must also ensure that every project moves the company in the right direction and delivers results that are worth the organization’s investments of time and money. To keep individual efforts aligned with long-term business strategies, executives need a systematic approach that blends a focus on portfolio management with clear priorities and effective stakeholder management.
Build the foundation with recurring portfolio reviews
Along with reviewing the health and status of each project, executives should also routinely evaluate how—and how effectively—each project contributes to the company’s overall objectives. However, a strategic review may not need to occur as frequently as routine status checks. Depending on the size of your portfolio and the number of initiatives in flight at a given time, you may choose to assess project health on a monthly basis and do a deeper dive into strategic alignment quarterly. A slightly longer cycle for strategy reviews may also help avoid knee-jerk shifts in direction due to transitory changes in market conditions, plus give leaders more time to assess trend data and other longer-view metrics.
Portfolio reviews accomplish two important things:
- They give executives the opportunity to understand which projects are truly aligned with the firm’s strategic direction and which may be at risk of straying outside that core path.
- They allow leaders to reassess whether activities are delivering the expected benefits and returns on the organization’s investments.
With these two elements in mind, senior staff can leverage regular portfolio reviews to implement timely course corrections, ensure resources remain optimally allocated across the portfolio, and avoid waste.
Establish (and stick to) your strategic priorities
Your business probably can’t pursue every project that crosses the radar. Because you don’t want to get bogged down by efforts that don’t meet your central goals, you need to set up a robust prioritization framework the entire executive team can use to review and either approve or axe requests as they come through. The framework doesn’t need to be complicated—the simpler and more straightforward, the better. Consider which factors will be most useful in helping senior staff make informed decisions about need, timing, and resource availability and allocations, and tweak the structure as needed to suit the organization’s evolving needs.
A framework should include clear criteria for evaluating each request’s strategic importance. Develop a repeatable method for evaluating dependencies between projects and identifying where a potential initiative could create challenges for other efforts. It’s also critical that executives are candid and realistic when assessing the company’s current capabilities and capacity to move each project to a successful completion. And finally, it’s important to use a consistent process to evaluate risks, benefits, and status across the entire project portfolio.
Drive strategic outcomes with robust stakeholder engagement
Your stakeholders’ day-to-day activities, discussions, and decisions steer your projects from the planning phase through to completion. They have significant influence over maintaining their project’s alignment with the organization’s strategic objectives, and regular communication with stakeholders about priorities and expectations is a vital element in keeping the entire portfolio on the right path.
Leadership teams should develop a comprehensive stakeholder engagement strategy to ensure everyone has sufficient context to inform their own decision-making processes. Executives can help drive stakeholder buy-in by clearly articulating how individual projects contribute to broader business objectives. Explaining elements such as the rationale behind decisions related to establishing strategic priorities and allocating resources within the portfolio will also help stakeholders maintain strategic alignment at the project level.
PMAlliance, Inc uses a team of highly experienced and certified professionals to provide project management consulting, project management training and project portfolio management.