Your anxiety
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You have developed a strong strategic framework for taking your organisation forward and have a clear vision for the future. You are now grappling with how to turn your vision into reality and don't really know how to begin to shape and manage a portfolio of programme and project activity that will get your organisation from where it is now to where you would really like it to be.
You are aware of the change you need to deliver, but in an environment of increasingly complex and resource-hungry programmes you have no way of knowing whether you are over-committing your organisation. Do you have the people, funds and other key resources required to deliver, and if not, then how can you take a structured approach to identifying, quantifying and mitigating capacity gaps before they result in bottlenecks, conflicts and under-delivery?
Once you have a number of projects grouped into a portfolio of programmes are you sure you have credible, relevant analysis of their viability and performance in order to direct corrective action, prioritise resources, and ensure best practice is being shared across the portfolio.
How we can help you
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As part of our programme and project management (PPM) offering we specialise in translating strategy into a portfolio of meaningful programmes of delivery activity. Our approach involves the formulation of a strategic route map in conjunction with senior managers drawn from across the organisation, normally at board level. Once the activities of the route map have been identified and agreed they each provide the basis of a change programme designed to address a particular aspect of the required strategic change. Together the set of programmes comprises the organisation's change portfolio, and individually each programme will comprise a set of projects which, collectively, will enable programme level benefits to be realised across the organisation.
In all organisations there is a finite limit to resources that can be deployed; the capacity constraint may be funds, project resources, a specific piece of equipment, or a highly specialised skill. At the outset organisations generally have the knowledge of their business to know what the delivery 'bottlenecks' are, and we encourage up-front identification and focus on these strategic resources.
Our capacity management approach follows an Identify-Analyse-Mitigate framework.
We work with the organisation to analyse the requirement for resources needed to support the change effort, and to quantify any potential surpluses or gaps. This then provides the input for management decision-making on how to mitigate imbalances by addressing either the supply or demand sides of the equation. The framework has the following features:
- Focus of analytical effort on key areas (such as 20% of resources providing 80% of the capacity risk) and encouraging high level, enterprise-wide thinking as opposed to micromanagement.
- Emphasis on the need to understand correctly the planned change portfolio, as a necessary input to capacity management.
- Assurance that the leaders of the organisation are willing and able to take mitigating actions – capacity management only provides benefit if it informs good decision-making (for example, by prioritisation).
- Recognition of capacity management as a capability which requires a 'continual improvement' mindset – the capability must be nurtured and enhanced.
We do not simply create a portfolio of change, but also work extensively with your top team to ensure individual programmes are correctly prioritised and scheduled to deliver optimum impact to the business. The portfolio schedule or strategy chart that emerges from this process can then be used as a standard reference point for all subsequent delivery activities.
Our portfolio assurance approach is to set-up a small team to provide independent, outcome focused, and constructive assurance directly to your organisation's board. Designed to fit our clients' organisation and governance arrangements and the scale and scope of their project portfolio, typical outline steps are:
- The portfolio is prioritised on inherent risk which includes the PR risk, as well as traditional delivery and cost risk. This provides a more sophisticated mechanism than simple project spend and allows focus of management effort on high impact projects.
- High impact projects are reviewed independently of delivery team and line management (e.g. by means of third party technical reviews, peer reviews etc.)
- The results of the reviews are synthesised with regular management reports to provide an independent commentary on the portfolio.
- The commentary report is fed into appropriate governance and management forums for action
How we would work with you
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The creation of a strategy chart representing a full organisational portfolio of activity, truly reflective of the key capacity constraints, cannot be achieved in isolation, not least because of the high levels of business input required. Typically this type of work is conducted in a facilitative style with board members and involves one or two of our more experienced consultants. Co-working enables close understanding and enables strong 'buy-in' to the resultant strategic route map. We find the best results are achieved by a workshop approach conducted over a number of sessions with suitable gaps for reflection between each. For working through the more detailed areas, e.g. building a capacity model for key pinch points, or to set up the on-going portfolio assurance tools and processes, we typically establish a joint team and work with our clients.
Tools and training we can provide
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The principal tools we use for portfolio formulation and prioritisation are the charts and schedules which represent how activities will be synchronised with one another to achieve optimal business impact.
While setting up and embedding a portfolio assurance function we aim to coach your team in maintaining the 'challenge and support' balance, transferring skills to both the assurance team and also to senior management recipients to ensure they know best how to use assurance information. Our risk categorisation tool, and independent review templates enable a running start to setting up the assurance function.
Our Capacity and Resource Planning (CARP) framework comprises a set of proven management tools and products which allow a fast start in terms of working with our clients to enhance their capacity management capability.
How this could deliver value for you
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We believe the real value of our strategic portfolio prioritisation and optimisation approach is the clarity it gives at board level to defining a necessarily complex set of delivery activities and their inter-relationships, ensuring that they do remain focused on achieving the over-arching strategy, within the capacity envelope. Our portfolio assurance methodology delivers real value by ensuring that finite management and external validation resource is focused on mission critical projects. Independent assurance reports are delivered in an easy-to-digest format for senior management and external stakeholder reading. These reports can be used as a third-party 'pressure test' as to whether critical projects are on track for successful outcome – recognising that project progress reports can occasionally suffer from a self-generated bias towards optimism.
Together, a prioritised portfolio, with senior management focused only on the strategic issues (eg failing programmes, capacity constraints, systemic improvement opportunities) provides a firm foundation for establishing and delivering the programmes that will subsequently drive beneficial change across the organisation.