CHAPTER 1
1. Demand Intake Handling
Why it's important
To be a successful PMO, you need to deliver outcomes on an ongoing basis against the needs of your business. To achieve this, it’s important your business users have an easy way to submit ideas or requests, and for you to have an easy way to measure the costs vs benefits of each request so you can prioritize the use of fiscal and human resources of the business appropriately.
By implementing a demand management solution with an inbuilt cost vs benefits scoring mechanism in your organization you enable your team to make smart decisions.
How you benefit
- Capture requests and demand from across your business with guided forms
- Perform cost vs benefit analysis across a range of metrics including alignment to your strategic goals
- Progress the projects that provide the highest ROI to your company
CHAPTER 2
2. Portfolio & Program Views
Why it's important
When you’re running a large number of projects, you need ways to group your projects together and to surface high-level information for executive reports and updates. Grouping projects into programs and portfolios allows you manage budgets, resources, outcomes and more by different parts of your organization.
Your PPM solution should allow you to create Portfolios, Programs, Projects and links between them all.
How you benefit
- Break your business down into manageable chunks
- Visualize high-level information at a summary level such as health, timelines and budgetary performance
- Drill down into the details take action, and deliver maximum ongoing value to your business
CHAPTER 3
3. Stage Gate Process Management
Why it's important
Stage / Phase Gate processes keep your organization on track by putting your prospective projects through a standardized evaluation process before the bulk of the budget is committed. Your team can use detailed information for each prospective project to decide which ones pass each gate in your process.
You should be looking for a solution that allows you to define your gate process along with what information is required to pass each gate.
How you benefit
- Prioritize high ROI projects over low ROI projects leading to better overall fiscal performance for your business
- Minimize wasted spend and effort for you team
- Re-work initiatives to extract repeatable value
CHAPTER 4
4. Supports Multiple Project Methodologies
Why it's important
To be successful, any solution you implement needs to support multiple project methodologies, otherwise your team will start using unauthorised tools to do their work.
The three main methodologies you should be looking for any solution to support are waterfall, agile and water-scrum-fall which combines the best of waterfall and agile together.
How you benefit
- Choice of methodology in how to run a project keeps your team in the same solution and on the same page
- All your project data in one place, means nothing gets lost in translation
- One set of reports for your execs showing planned vs actual performance across your portfolio
CHAPTER 5
5. Cross Project Dependencies
Why it's important
When your managing tens or hundreds of projects across a large organization, there are going to be interactions between different projects that need to be considered. For instance you can’t start deploy a new email system until the network has been installed.
You need a solution that gives your users a clear visualization of how your many projects across your organization interact with each other and in what ways.
How you benefit
- Visualize parent, grandparent, child or grandchild projects in a single view to give you a 360 view of interactions
- See high-level information such as dates, health and completion information
- When needed, drill into the full details of parent projects in seconds to see how your project could be impacted
CHAPTER 6
6. Skills-based Resource Management
Why it's important
As your team grows in number, it becomes increasingly hard to keep track of what skills your team has, who has upcoming PTO and what people are assigned to in the coming weeks.
Without knowing this information, your resources may become double booked, putting your delivery timelines in jeopardy.
You are also hit by an inability to know when you can take on new projects, either reducing your utilization metrics or making false promises to your business on when you can deliver.
How you benefit
- Keep projects on schedule driving business satisfaction
- Use your team more efficiently, increasing your resource utilization rates
- Know when your team can take on more work, to keep the whole business growing
CHAPTER 7
7. Configurable Reporting & Analytics
Why it's important
Collecting data is one thing, but presenting it to your management team in a manner that lets them make informed decisions to improve the business is another.
That’s why you need your Project Portfolio Management solution to come with not just a set of out of the box reports but is also customizable by your business users, so all the reports and dashboards that your executives need to make decisions to drive your business forward are always at hand.
How you benefit
- Report on all your KPIs in real time, 24 hours a day from any device
- Visual dashboards with drill-down capabilities to the underlying details
- Configurable to your unique business needs
- Scheduled email updates of your key reports
CHAPTER 8
8. Online Training & Certifications
Why it's important
When you invest in a solution it’s typically the start of a multi-year relationship with the vendor and the solution. Over time, new releases will roll out and your team will change as people move roles and you bring on new hires.
So you need a vendor with a strong online training solution to keep your staff up to date and onboard new employees. Look for a vendor with training broken out by roles, and one with a certification program, so you can measure your team’s training effort.
How you benefit
- Keeps your team informed of the benefits your business can get from updated versions of solutions
- Gets your new hires up to speed quickly on your key business solutions
- Certification programs let you find qualified staff with pre-existing competence in your onboarding solution
