Benefits of Social Collaboration

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 Tim Washington Leave a comment

The Potential for Social Collaboration

Innovation is a hot topic in business right now with an ever growing need for companies to deliver better products and services. A key ingredient for fostering innovation is enterprise collaboration. Until a few years ago, collaboration was often limited to smaller teams, but this could introduce a higher risk of duplicative efforts occurring simultaneously in larger companies. With the development of enterprise social networks (ESN’s) comes improved collaboration to include all employees across all organizations thus significantly increasing innovation and quality across the company.

The promise of enterprise social collaboration comes from the power of the network with the ability to tap into the collective brain trust of the organization. The potential payoff for corporations is enormous as indicated by a 2012 McKinsey report identifying a potential for over $1 trillion in new business value to be created annually through the use of enterprise social networks (e.g. improved product development, work efficiencies, etc.)

The 4 C’s of Social Project and Portfolio Management

In the context of project and portfolio management, social tools impact employee connection, communication, collaboration, and community (also known as the 4 C’s).

Connection

The power of the network begins with having the right connections in the organization. Social tools enable employees to connect with a broader group of colleagues than would otherwise occur in day to day work. User profiles provide additional detail around work history, education, and other personal information that foster stronger connections on a professional and personal level. Project managers with a larger number of connections have a greater pool of resources to choose from when building out their project team as well as quickly identify subject matter experts to assist in critical phases of work.

A good project portfolio social platform can also alert users of other people who have managed similar risks and issues, or have worked on similar product lines or IT systems. By making these types of connections, project managers can reach out to the right people at the right time for help and leverage proven solutions rather than losing time developing a duplicate solution that already existed.

Communication

Email is still the predominant form of business communication (per Email Statistics Report, Radicati) with over 100 billion business emails sent each day. Tremendous amounts of business knowledge is trapped in the inboxes of employees and is not searchable by other knowledge workers who would benefit from accessing those key conversations. Alternatively, conversations, discussions, and answers to questions within social platforms become searchable content that is continually being enriched by the users of the social platform. Project teams can proactively search for new information to discover other teams that have encountered similar challenges, learn how they solved problems, and re-use successful solutions. This fosters further communication and improves project delivery and quality.

Collaboration

One of the promises of enterprise social networks is the ability for a broader group of people to work collaboratively within and across project teams. At the portfolio level, the quality of new project proposals increases substantially when employees can collaborate (“crowdsource”) on new ideas; great ideas can generate a lot of traction and be improved even before reaching a governance committee. At the project level, team members have greater visibility of work in progress and can comment on deliverables and other project work. These comments are made visible to other team members who can further build upon those comments to improve the overall quality of the work.

Community

In addition to improving communication and collaboration at the project level, social communities can spring up around areas of common interest where participants can ask questions, share ideas and learn from one another. This further strengthens connections, communication, and collaboration. One example is a project management community of practice that can promote project management best practices across an enterprise. This not only uplifts the quality of project management within the company but creates a way for senior project managers to share valuable experience with younger project managers, who in turn, have more opportunities to develop and grow in their profession.

Challenges to Social Collaboration

The top two challenges to successfully establishing social collaboration are developing a collaborative culture and sufficient leadership engagement with social tools. In actuality, senior leadership is responsible for both.

Large scale social collaboration cannot and will not occur without an organizational culture of collaboration. Unless senior leadership fosters a culture of collaboration, most employees will be too focused on their day to day work to devote any attention to collaboration. Without this culture, there won’t be any true incentive to collaborate and any encouragement to use social collaboration tools will feel like a tax on people’s time to switch back and forth between traditional email and new social tools.

Additionally, senior leadership cannot merely sponsor a social collaboration initiative; rather, they need to lead by example to use the tools, which will have a powerful effect on the organization. When senior leadership demonstrates greater transparency and communication through the use of social tools, the rest of the organization will follow suit.

My Perspective

Changing an organization’s culture and the behavior of senior leadership are both very difficult. Only a concerted effort of organizational change management can redirect a company toward collaboration. Such change must be of high enough priority that it affects the daily behavior of senior leadership to embrace enterprise social networks. Based on Dr. John Kotter’s change model, senior leaders need to establish a sense of urgency around social collaboration. There must be a powerful guiding coalition to create a shared vision and communicate it across the organization. Then, both leaders and employees must act on the vision and rally around demonstrative, short-term wins.

The Bottom Line

Enterprise social networks have tremendous potential to improve project and portfolio management effectiveness—but only when the company possesses a culture of collaboration. Senior leadership is uniquely responsible for ensuring that such a culture exists before implementing social collaboration tools and must lead by example to improve adoption. With strong leadership and a collaborative culture, your organization can reap the many benefits of social collaboration in the context of project and portfolio management. This will result in a smarter and healthier company.

Strengthen Talent Management With PPM

May 30, 2015June 26, 2015 Tim Washington Leave a comment

Is It Just About Talent Acquisition?

When people refer to the “war for talent” many discussions center on talent acquisition and try to answer the question “how do we hire the best people?” Although talent acquisition is important, talent development and retention are also very important (you want to keep those great people you hired, correct?). Hiring good people is not the most challenging part; because the war for talent is real, retaining talented people is difficult. This is where project portfolio management (or “PPM” for short) strengthens the traditional HR approach to talent management.

In a recent LinkedIn discussion, Emily Smith asked a broad question on how PPM software can impact unemployment rates. My response was that portfolio management as a discipline and PPM software with the right data can significantly improve talent retention and development. Before we continue down this path, let me quickly summarize project portfolio management. PPM is firstly about doing the right work to accomplish strategic goals, and it is also about focusing resource attention on high priority projects while balancing overall resource capacity. In larger organizations you can imagine how difficult it is just to monitor all of the project work going on and ensure that each project is on track to completion. However, with a little extra focus (and the right software), organizations should also monitor the skills and abilities of the people doing the work and assign people to projects that align with their interests and help them grow professionally. These last points are often after thoughts in project management because of the sheer focus on simply getting work done.

The Value of PPM to Talent Management

Consider for a moment the value to performance management of having an employee report show all of the projects they have been involved with over the last several years with the strategic importance to the organization, the complements given by their project teammates, the skills they have improved and developed, the degree of alignment to professional areas of growth, and even the people mentored during those projects. That would be powerful, and if used correctly, would send a strong message to employees that this company enables them to grow professionally and make a difference through their work. Wow.

Sadly, I don’t know if this system exists. Current HR management systems are not designed as portfolio management systems that would track this level of project detail. Even having a system that a project manager could use to do a search across the company for people who have particular skills and experience for a new challenging project would be a great enhancement over what we have today—assigning spare bodies just to keep up with the flood of work going on.

Project portfolio management complements and enhances talent management. Do you agree? Tell me how well your talent management processes are going, especially if there is any linkage to project and portfolio management.

Talent management graphic courtesy of Lean Home Care

Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook

March 13, 2015March 13, 2015 Tim Washington Leave a comment

Book Review

The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook by Jerry Manas is the authoritative source for any organization wanting to improve its resource management practices in the context of portfolio management. The opening chapter does a great job of providing basic context of resource management and capacity planning and strongly leverages a benchmark study by Appleseed RMCP and expert practitioners in the field.

Organizations continue to struggle with the matter of resource management and “when you consider the constant change, lack of visibility into resource capacity, and no sense of which work is most important, the result is a perfect storm of resource management chaos.” In order to address this problem, Manas systematically covers key topics chapter by chapter that provide relevant help to companies seeking to improve. This book is not about mere theory, but gives literally hundreds of practical points based on corporate reality.

Chapter 2 addresses the road to maturity for improving resource management. I am a big believer in assessing organizational maturity, and Manas does a great job of acknowledging that organizations are on a road to maturity, and through the help of expert practitioners, gives examples of how organizations have matured their resource management processes. The chapter also addresses the matter of time tracking and does an excellent job of providing a balanced view of why to do it and how to make it work.

In chapter 3, Manas presents a systems approach for diagnosing the root causes of poor resource management. He brings out a number of points that should strike a chord in any organizations. In the latter half of the chapter, he uses systems thinking to deep dive on estimating resources and tasks.

Chapter 4 addresses the much needed topic of leadership and organizational change management. I was very pleased to see an entire chapter devoted to these two subjects, because most of the time in portfolio management literature, the emphasis is either on process or tools, with little regard for the people dimension (which is very critical). Much of the chapter is spent on the “50 ways to lead your users”, which is a systematic and structured approach to leading change in the organization.

Chapter 5 addresses key roles for making resource management and capacity planning successful. One of the key takeaways is that successful organizations very often have dedicated resources to support capacity planning exercises. He also takes time explaining the expanding role of the PMO.

Chapter 6 is an enjoyable chapter on strategic alignment and how not to manage resource capacity management like failed military leaders in the past.

Chapter 7 is a great chapter focusing on the human side of resource management. As chapter 4 addressed the people side of leadership and change management, this chapter does an equally good job of explaining why it is important for organizations to pay attention to the human side of project execution and resource productivity when trying to improve resource management.

Chapter 8 expands upon a white paper Manas wrote called “the Capacity Quadrant”. This chapter speaks more frankly about the topic of portfolio management and the need for visibility, prioritization, optimization, and integration of the portfolio. I loved his white paper on the topic and felt that this chapter could have been moved up earlier in the book to provide a clearer view of resource management and capacity planning within the context of project portfolio management.

The final chapter, chapter 9, concludes with industry specific challenges of resource management and capacity planning. This chapter turned out to be the cherry on top as it provided insight into unique challenges faced by different industries. Learning about challenges faced by other industries actually gives greater context to the capacity planning problem and puts readers on the alert for identifying and solving these problems in their own company.

My Conclusion to Resource Management and Capacity Planning

The Resource Management and Capacity Planning Handbook is a must-have book for PMO directors and senior leaders struggling with making the best use of limited resources. Jerry Manas has a great writing style that makes the book easy to read and easy to understand. He also does a fantastic job of blending theory with reality by explaining key topics and then providing numerous tips on how to be more successful with resource management.

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Increase the Value of PPM Systems

September 30, 2014September 30, 2014 Tim Washington Leave a comment

Today’s Environment

Project portfolio management (PPM) helps organizations make decisions that move the needle toward achieving their strategic objectives. In order to make those decisions, senior leadership needs the right information at the right time. This is where PPM systems come in, providing the quality data helping to inform sound decision making. Unfortunately, many companies assume that merely implementing a PPM system will improve their ability to execute strategy. There’s more to it.

Point B’s Perspective

In order for PPM systems to add value, organizations need to consider five important factors: business drivers, reporting, data, processes and people.

Read the entire article here

The Simplicity Effect of PPM 2.0

January 14, 2013August 2, 2014 Tim Washington 2 Comments

“A fascinating trend is consuming Silicon Valley and beginning to eat away at rest of the world: the radical simplification of everything.”

PPM vendors would be wise to take notice of this article by Fast Company. Portfolio management is not rocket science, yet many of the software offerings on the market can be difficult to use. Unfortunately, very few of the vendors have a user experience in place that matches the current expectation of software. As this article points out, this leaves the door open for better vendors to come in. There were several noteworthy quotes which I will share below:

“Ultimately, any market that doesn’t have a leader in simplicity soon will”

“If you’re not the simplest solution, you’re the target of one”

“Any product with an interface that slows people down is ripe for extinction”

A related article by the NY Times, stated that design now rivals technology in importance. These articles highlight the shift that is taking place with technology and software. Merely having the best technology or the most functionality is no longer good enough; design is critical. More specifically, user experience is critical for new software going forward. Unfortunately, for the current portfolio management vendors, this means some expensive re-designs of existing systems.

User experience is a key component of PPM 2.0. Companies need solutions that are easy to use and will garner strong user adoption. I know from extensive first-hand experience with one of the “leaders” in the portfolio management space, that being a “leader” means nothing, delivering useful solutions means everything. Powerful solutions need to be simple. Simplicity is important because without it, user adoption suffers and the benefits of portfolio management decline. Many of today’s “leaders” led the charge as part of PPM 1.0. However, with the emergence of cloud, mobile, and social, PPM 2.0 promises even more value with easier to use solutions.

Greater Value From Portfolio Management Systems

December 2, 2012August 2, 2014 Tim Washington Leave a comment

Portfolio management systems have a very real place in making PPM processes successful. These systems have the potential to drive value in a number of ways, some of which are highlighted below:

1) Enterprise repository (“single source of truth”)—having a single system that contains up-to-date and accurate project and portfolio data is valuable. Gone are the days of maintaining multiple versions of static Excel files that contain the current “authorized” list of projects. This value is magnified the easier it is to access the system and the greater the number of users who access the system.

2) Process enabler—on top of merely storing project and portfolio data, portfolio management systems can better enable portfolio processes through workflow automation. This is particularly useful for stage-gate project reviews that have a number of review steps and need approval by multiple parties. Portfolio management system can also better enable project management and capacity management processes. Thus the tool reduces the amount of work needed to carry out these processes, reducing lead time and costs.

3) Portfolio tools—portfolio management systems commonly come with tools that make portfolio management easier overall. One clear example is portfolio optimization, which is difficult (if not impossible) with spreadsheets and other databases. Portfolio management systems can make this otherwise difficult job easier by providing the tools needed to effectively get the job done.

4) Reporting and analytics—one of the greatest benefits of utilizing portfolio management systems is to get accurate and up-to-date reports on the status and health of projects, programs, and portfolios. Buying a portfolio management system and not utilizing the reporting capabilities or analytics is like buying a car with only two gears—you’ll make progress but not as quickly as you will by providing decision makers with insightful information and up-to-date reports.

The critical question then is, “how much value are you getting out of your portfolio management system?” If the cost of the system plus the cost of entering data plus the cost of maintaining the system exceeds the value of the information coming out of it, senior leadership either needs to reconsider its ways or change its portfolio management system.

As we discussed in an earlier post, leadership plays a huge part in making sure the right data gets fed into the system at the right time. Yet, leadership plays just as big of a role in making sure the organization gets value from its portfolio management system. Let’s quickly review the four areas where companies can derive value from portfolio management systems and the potential risks.

1) Enterprise repository—if employees and managers do not access the system often, or if there are competing places to get similar project and portfolio data, the system loses value.

2) Process enabler—if project and portfolio processes are not regularly followed, then the effort to load the system with data to enable those processes is a waste of time.

3) Portfolio tools—if the organization does not leverage the tools available in its portfolio management system, then it paid extra money for tools it doesn’t use.

4) Reporting and analytics—if senior management does not pull reports and use the data, then all the effort to ensure that quality data is going into the system is a waste of time. Even worse, if management does not communicate that it uses the data and demonstrate how it uses the data, the organization easily becomes skeptical of the value of portfolio management.

What value do you currently get from your portfolio management systems? Have you encountered any of the problems mentioned above?

Be Sure To Use The Portfolio Data

November 22, 2012December 22, 2015 Tim Washington Leave a comment

Data represents a major facet of successfully implementing project portfolio management (PPM). In a previous post, I discussed how data drives the portfolio management engine and some of the key components for getting good data into the tool. Some important portfolio data types includes: financial data, resource data, schedule data, and benefits data. Leadership plays a pivotal part in the whole process from determining which data is needed to using the data for better decision making. This post will concentrate on the last part of the process—how to use the portfolio data.

Use the Portfolio Data

Data quality is never perfect at the beginning of a portfolio management process. Collecting data takes time and effort, and with so much demand on individual’s time, people do not want to waste time collecting data that is unnecessary or won’t be used. This is why it is so important for senior leaders to use the portfolio data. When leadership uses the data, they will understand what data is truly needed for higher quality decision making. Moreover, once the data gets used, the gaps in the data will be readily apparent and will give senior leaders an opportunity to reinforce the importance of the portfolio processes (that collect the data in the first place). However, using the data is only the first step in a three step process. Next, leadership needs to communicate that the data is being used.

Communicate that You Use the Portfolio Data

Communicating that the portfolio data is being used is a conscious effort on the part of the senior management team, but is something very easy to do. It can also easily be overlooked. Think about it. Project managers and resource managers can put data into the PPM system not knowing if it is simply going into a black hole or is actually helping the organization. Without communication, they may never hear whether the data is actually being used. A prime example occurs with resource data and capacity management. In order for capacity management to be successful, good data is needed, which takes a lot of effort by project managers and resource managers. If the project managers and resource managers do not believe that the data is actually being used, there will be less effort going forward in entering and maintaining the data. Even when an organization is mandated to use a PPM system, the data can be compromised by a small number of people who do not take the process seriously. Communicating that the data is being used is necessary for reinforcing the importance of the portfolio processes, yet senior leadership needs to take one more step—demonstrate how the data is being used.

Demonstrate How You Use the Portfolio Data

Communicating that the data is being used is good, but demonstrating how the data is being used is even better. This will send a clear message to the organization of how important it is to maintain accurate and up-to-date information in the portfolio system. If the data is being used to drive decisions around strategic project investments, staffing plans, bonuses, etc., then people will be more likely to spend the time to enter, update, and maintain the data. However, if the data is used to create a report that merely scratches the itch of a curious executive, then the people involved with the portfolio processes won’t have much interest in making sure that the data is accurate and up-to-date.

Using portfolio data, communicating that the portfolio data is being used, and demonstrating how the data is being used are the responsibilities of senior leadership. None of these steps are difficult, but need to be taken on a regular basis if the organization wants to be successful with portfolio management. Collecting data comes at a price, and if the data isn’t being used, it is better for the organization to stop wasting its time and focus on things that move the organization forward. A small amount of effort on the part of the senior leaders can go a long way toward making portfolio management successful and useful. Data is the fuel that runs the portfolio engine. Bad data will clog the engine; good data will help the organization sail forward. Using the data, communicating that the data is being used, and demonstrating how the data is being used will not only make the difference in being successful at portfolio management, it’s also smart business.

Use the portfolio data — How to use the portfolio data

The Right Portfolio Data at the Right Time

September 18, 2012August 2, 2014 Tim Washington 4 Comments

From a very pragmatic point of view, getting the right data at the right time is at the heart of good project portfolio management. If the right data is not available for decision makers to use, the issue will be mediocre results at best. Portfolio management is about selecting the right projects, optimizing the portfolio to deliver maximum benefit, protecting portfolio value to ensure that that value is delivered, and improving portfolio value by maturing organizational processes. At every step, data is required. The quality and quantity of data correlates to portfolio maturity. Some less mature organizations will collect insufficient data which leads to sub-optimal decisions. Other organizations may try to collect too much data before they are ready to utilize it and can do more harm than good by burning out employees with burdensome processes. Mature organizations will have the discipline and rigor to collect the right amount of quality data.

Therefore, understanding the data needed upfront is a success factor for portfolio management. There are several types of portfolio data:

Strategic data
Resource data
Schedule data (forecasts and actuals)
Performance data
Financial data (estimates and actuals)
Time tracking
Request data
Etc.

Senior management bears the responsibility for identifying the right data to be used in the portfolio management process. In addition, senior leadership needs to drive the accountability for collecting the right data. Without active engagement and feedback from senior management, data quality can suffer.

Organizational processes are very important for ensuring that the right data is collected. Selecting the right projects requires that good data is collected about each candidate project. Such data must be relevant to the senior management team that makes portfolio decisions. Data that is not used for decision making or information sharing is considered a waste. Collecting data comes at a cost, and organizations need to put the right processes in place in order to collect good data. From this angle, portfolio management processes are about collecting a sufficient amount of the right data. Without good standards and processes, important portfolio data will be collected inconsistently resulting in confusion and possible error.

Portfolio tools have a very important place in the portfolio management ecosystem, but only after leadership has identified what is required and lean processes have been created to facilitate data collection. Portfolio systems store and transform project and portfolio data for general consumption (aka reporting and analytics). For less mature organizations with fewer data requirements, simple portfolio systems such as Excel and Sharepoint can be used in the portfolio process. Maturing organizations should select portfolio software that meets the needs of its data requirements.

Lastly, senior leadership needs to use the data in the system for making better portfolio decisions. Strong portfolio systems will generate the reports and analytics necessary to support better investment decisions. Good data is the fuel that makes the portfolio engine run! Without good ‘fuel’, senior management will be unable to drive the organization toward its strategic goals. The data perspective of portfolio management begins and ends with senior leadership.

Highlights from Day 2 of the Gartner PPM Conference

May 30, 2012May 30, 2012 Tim Washington Leave a comment

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

What Are We Optimizing? Part 1

May 15, 2012May 15, 2012 Tim Washington 3 Comments

Portfolio optimization entails all the steps necessary to construct an optimal portfolio given current limitations and constraints. These steps occur repeatedly in the portfolio management lifecycle and work in tandem with Stage-Gate processes for selecting the right projects. The purpose of optimization is to maximize the portfolio value under certain constraints. Understanding and managing these constraints is critical for making portfolio optimization a useful component of the portfolio management process.

We can optimize a portfolio in multiple ways:
1) Cost-value optimization (aka ‘efficient frontier analysis’)
2) Resource optimization (aka ‘capacity management’)
3) Schedule optimization (project sequencing)
4) Work type optimization (portfolio balancing)

The question then is, when we are optimizing the portfolio, what is it that we are optimizing? Many portfolio management computing systems promote efficient frontier analysis which commonly focuses on cost-value optimization. However, as useful as this is, it does not often take into account resource optimization, schedule optimization, or even work-type optimization. It is possible for portfolio systems to include some of these constraints, but most are not advertised in that way.

Furthermore, it is fundamental to understand the limitations and constraints on the portfolio, for without knowing the constraints it is not possible to optimize the portfolio and maximize organizational value. The constraint for cost-value optimization is the available budget. This helps us determine an optimal budget based on limited financial resources. The constraint for resource optimization is human resource availability. This can be measured in a number of ways and will be discussed in another post. Optimizing against critical resource availability is recommended. Schedule optimization is focused on project timing and dependencies. Work type optimization is focused on categorical designations (i.e. portfolio balancing—how much do we want to invest in key areas).

Phased Approach for Portfolio Software Implementations

March 23, 2012March 23, 2012 Tim Washington Leave a comment

In a previous blog post, I commented on doing portfolio management ‘by hand’ to learn the processes before adopting a robust portfolio tool. In a recent discussion on LinkedIn, one consultant commented that this most successful PPM software implementations occurred when companies took a phased approach to ease in the new solution. The first phase involved simpler tools to allow the organization to become familiar with portfolio management, followed by the full implementation with the advanced PPM capabilities.

After reading this I felt that there was a lot of wisdom in such an approach. Firstly, it gives the organization time to develop their own portfolio processes without the burden of learning a new tool upfront. Secondly, it allows stakeholders (ie. Project managers, steering team, etc) to understand portfolio processes and be comfortable using them. Third, based on the early experience with project portfolio management, the organization will better understand their own requirements for a full fledged tool.

In a great article on IT Project Portfolio Management, Jonathan Feldman asks organizations to consider the problem they are trying to solve and start with high level data rather than getting too detailed. “If you know what the end goal is, you can start to quantify how close you are to that goal”. Great advice as this too points to the need for a phased approach to implementing portfolio management.

What are your lessons learned with your portfolio management implementations?

Doing Portfolio Mechanics by Hand

September 28, 2011November 24, 2011 Tim Washington 1 Comment

In a recent discussion on LinkedIn regarding portfolio tool implementations, one consultant commented that the most successful deployments have been done in phases with an upgrade to a more sophisticated tool being done after improving process maturity.

Such an approach makes a lot of sense and could be likened to using a calculator after learning how to do math by hand. I think the analogy is appropriate. Educators encourage kids to learn the basic and important mathematical skills before using a calculator so that they understand foundational concepts.

The same could apply to project portfolio management in the sense that organizations are better off learning the portfolio mechanics and process disciplines ‘by hand’ before jumping into a dedicated portfolio tool. I believe that those organizations that learn to do PPM ‘by hand’ will end up maturing faster and/or utilizing a full fledged portfolio tool better than had they gone straight to the sophisticated software. The advantage is in learning the processes behind the tool. “A fool with a tool is still a fool”, but if the ‘fool’ can learn portfolio processes, the organization will not ‘toy’ around with portfolio software but will yield greater results due to the process maturity.

I personally have learned a lot by creating portfolio charts and calculating prioritization scores ‘by hand’. As a result, I have a much better understanding of what a dedicated portfolio tool should do based on the processes we have developed.