Bringing order to a complex portfolio for The Water Service
- OverviewRead more
We created and established a Portfolio Management Office for the Water Services division, one of three strategic business units within Severn Trent Water. This provided their management team with improved governance across the entire portfolio of their change initiatives, whilst at the same time offering improved programme and project management methods and tools to enable more successful delivery. The creation of this function was fundamental for the client team to be able to achieve their eight corporate Key Strategic Initiatives. We followed four important principles: start simply; progress one step at a time; implement top down, not bottom up; and prioritise project delivery. This ensured a structured approach, which resulted in best programme and project management practice being enabled and promoted both within and beyond the Water Services operations.
- Our client's challengeRead more
The Water Services (WS) management team, one of three strategic business units within Severn Trent Water (STW), determined that a more structured approach was required for the management and governance of their entire portfolio of change initiatives, designed to achieve their eight corporate Key Strategic Intentions (KSIs).
- Our responseRead more
A diagnostic of the WS Programme and Project Management (PPM) capability highlighted that the highest priority was the creation of a strategic function which they called the WS Programme Management Office (WSPMO). This was essentially a Portfolio Management Office plus PPM service and capability offerings to support programme and project delivery.
The WSPMO would:
- Establish and maintain an effective portfolio management regime
- Guide the development of PPM capability - the right PPM methods and tools to improve programme and project delivery and support the performance and development of people working in programmes and projects
- Seek to enable collaboration on PPM operation and best practice, both across the organisation and externally
We adopted the following principles:
- Start simply - building on what already existed, the solution matched STW's ability to their ambition.
- Progress one step at a time - the project targeted steady progress; stakeholder management remained a high priority.
- Implement top down, not bottom up - the desired culture change and new ways of working would only be embedded over time if the WS management team fostered this change. The WSPMO had to be seen as an enabler for both management and programme / project staff - the WSPMO was owned by the WS management team.
- Prioritise project delivery - the primary objective was to implement a pragmatic approach to portfolio management to provide visibility at senior levels and help add early value to the delivery of the portfolio. The other objectives - developing PPM capability and collaboration across STW into the wider (external) PPM profession - were equally important.
- The value to our clientRead more
STW realised early value including:
- Better visibility of the complete portfolio for the WS management team was provided, raising prioritisation questions earlier than expected;
- Ongoing portfolio management decisions began to be taken based on current, accurate and clear information provided on an exception basis;
- All new initiatives adopted the emerging standards and methods thereby accelerating take-up of the new way of working, at the request of the Director of WS;
- Activity to develop PPM in two other departments was aligned with the WSPMO earlier than expected resulted in significant savings in development effort. A mechanism for linking programme and project objectives to corporate KSIs was provided, enabling informed portfolio prioritisation / decision making;
- Best programme and project management practice was better enabled and promoted both within and beyond WS; and
- Simplified and tailored access to fit for purpose PPM materials within a common gated lifecycle was established via an intuitive lifecycle-themed intranet site.
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