The PPM Governance Lifecycle: Create, Select, Plan, Manage
Overview
Assigning the right resources to the right activities at the right time – in other words, alignment – is the ultimate goal of business governance. An organization’s strategy, operational structure, execution process and technical expertise are all tested when resource assignments are made. Portfolios, programs and projects are all formal expressions of resource assignment decisions. Accordingly, a systematic approach to collecting, selecting, planning and managing them is key to a high-quality IT Governance process.
Portfolios, programs and projects all share a common lifecycle. This lifecycle is formed around four key PPM gates, ‘Create ? Select ? Plan ? Manage’.
- Create: Standardized intake process and data collection structures for formation of the project portfolio inventory. Formal definition of strategic goals and objectives to support portfolio prioritization and selection.
- Select: Repeatable process for prioritization of the project portfolio. Decision-making for progression, suspension or rejection of work requests.
- Plan: Scheduling and resource assignment processes for the entire project portfolio, supported by detailed project planning.
- Manage: Ensuring successful project delivery, ongoing project tracking and reporting; and portfolio realignment
This simple framework can serve as a foundation for evaluating and improving governance practices. Organization-wide adoption of the ‘Create, Select, Plan, Manage’ lifecycle leads to consistent definition and common understanding of its underlying core processes:
- 1. Demand Management – starts with having standard methods and structures for capturing all work ranging from simple support or change requests, to large complex projects and programs. Demand Management also includes definition of workflow for proper categorization, evaluation and characterization of the work request.
- Portfolio Selection – is the process of evaluating a portfolio of project requests, prioritizing the requests and approving or rejecting requests. To determine the best combination of projects, portfolio managers should use multiple criteria and analyses, including strategic, financial and risk. A portfolio selection that maximizes the portfolio’s value (as determined by the relevant criteria) given budget or resource constraints is considered “Optimized”.
- Capacity Planning – is a continuous process of evaluating an organization’s resources and performance to determine its capacity for production of work. It includes setting utilization targets for defined sets of people – usually by title and/or skill set. It also includes a collection of project metrics to understand productivity and subsequent adjustment of utilization targets. Proactive capacity planning allows organizations to finalize a release roadmap that maximizes resource utilization
- Resource Management – is about the assignment of resources to projects and tasks. For large organizations, this is typically an elaborate process that includes shuffling of resources to meet demands of project delivery schedules and project priorities.
- Financial Management – exists at both the project and portfolio levels. At the project level, financial management is the estimation of project costs and benefits, and tracking project expenditures against the project budget. At the portfolio level, financial management focuses on gaining visibility into spend (committed, planned and discretionary) and tracking the overall project portfolio budget.
- Project Scheduling – includes developing accurate project schedules; and defining repeatable best practice efforts. These two activities reinforce efforts to understand interdependencies between project schedules.
- Time Reporting – provides structures and methods for individual reporting of time spent on projects or tasks by resources. This information feeds project and portfolio reporting and provides visibility into the actual work progress, current work status and remaining work.
- Team Collaboration – in PPM, is the structured sharing of information to support knowledge sharing, change management, communication of schedule milestones, issues and risk management.
- Portfolio Reporting – provides visibility of the project portfolio to executives and functional leaders. To support sound decision-making and operational efficiency, a common view of projects and priorities is essential. By having executives, PMOs, and project managers share a common view of the organization, inefficiencies due to conflicting information are minimized and discussions can be focused on value-adding portfolio analysis.
- Project Reporting – helps to ensure consistent tracking of projects and efficient communication of project objectives and status.
- Program Management – can be viewed as management of large initiatives comprised of multiple projects. Programs should be aligned with an organization’s strategy and the results of a program are produced through the delivery of its projects
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