Sunday 28 January 2018

How achievable is your portfolio of projects in 2018?



How achievable is your portfolio of projects in 2018?


In his excellent blog Paul Every, Solitaire Consulting outlines some of the challenges of managing projects.

Key points

1.      By January you will have agreed delivery strategy supported by business cases
2.      You have budget and plans, but not necessary resources
3.      You have non-strategic projects that are demanding attention

He then offered some simple but useful self-assessment questions about how realistic your ambition is and the offers a list of benefits of using a PMO (Project Management Office) to help co-ordinate and manage and external project delivery resources to help deliver.

I won’t offer the detail because I’d like to encourage people to have a read of the article, which you can find here.


SOME REFLECTIONS

My experience is that surprisingly few organisations have an agreed delivery strategy supported by business cases. At best they have a vague idea of what they want to achieve but less about how. Today’s businesses are more agile and responsive, which impairs the ability to design, communicate and deliver a consistent and coherent plan.

In a world of mission, vision, sound-bites and style, business cases, budgets and plans are generally a tool of persuasion than a blue-print for delivery. Often they contain more rhetoric than understanding.

THE IMPORTANCE OF LEADERSHIP

A Project Manager is someone who can deliver exactly what is required, on-time, on-budget, to-specification with low-risk and high-communications

A Project Leader is someone who can help the client develop clarity on exactly what they need. This may be by workshop, facilitation or prototyping. Once that clarity is there developing and delivering is much more straight-forward.

There is no doubt that businesses can benefit from a PMO and external project delivery resources to help deliver. But first and foremost what is needed is the ability to understand the aim and context and then manage the necessary coalition of compromise in order to do a few things well rather than many things badly.

IMPACT OF FAILURE

The failure to co-ordinate and manage is less about the non-delivery of projects but the impact it has on the people who become cynical, suffer change fatigue, and ultimately loose trust in the vision and leadership of the organisation.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim Rogers is a Qualified Change Practitioner and PRINCE2 Project Manager, with an MBA in Management Consultancy. Past projects have included the incorporation of Ports of Jersey and Operations Change and Sales Support for RBSI and NatWest. He is a tutor/lecturer for the Chartered Management Institute. 

CONTACT

TimHJRogers@AdaptConsultingCompany.Com
+447797762051 Skype: timhjrogers TimHJRogers@gmail.com

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