Highlights from Day 2 of the Gartner PPM Conference

Benefits and Beyond: Rethinking the Strategic Value of Project, Program, and Portfolio Management (Mark Langley-PMI  and Matt Light, Gartner )

  • We need to be able to answer the question, “Why did we do what we did?”
  • Benefits realization is a process throughout the project management lifecycle (among high performing organizations) not just at the end.
  • We have an increased need for leadership.
  • We need two types of project managers: those who are project capable, and a select group of turn-around artists who can also train/mentor junior project managers.
  • Benefits realization = ACCOUNTABILITY, which requires a ‘culture of PPM’
  • Organizations should match talent with appropriate projects
  • If you don’t have a business case, you are guaranteed to not know whether you achieved anticipated value
  • Finally, it requires leaders to deliver benefits

 

Follow the Yellow Brick Road (Michael Hanford, Gartner )

Pros and Cons of Centralized PMO

  • Pros: Can develop a better project management culture faster, everyone reports to the same director
  • Cons: business knowledge ages, disconnected group from the rest of the business

 

Identifying and Harnessing Complexity in Projects, Programs, and Portfolios (Robert Handler, Gartner )

  • See: A Leader’s Framework for Decision Making for more information on the Cynefin model
  • Work in the Simple area of the Cynefin model should not be projectized
  • 80% of projects reside in the complicated area
  • 20% of projects are likely in the complex area (but drive 80% of the value).

 

PPM Marketscope (Daniel Stang, Gartner )

  • Out of the box report is weak for many PPM vendors
  • Most companies never get past time tracking
  • It can take 3+ years to resolve resource management challenges
  • With new implementations, start small and provide ‘just enough’ visibility
Tim Washington
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Tim Washington

I am the President at Acuity PPM. We deliver easy to use project portfolio management software to replace spreadsheets. If your PMO is still using spreadsheets to track and manage the project portfolio, contact us.

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