Before you launch into the nitty-gritty details of your project plan, such as scheduling and resourcing, you had better make sure the project is in alignment with business objectives. Does it fit in with the existing business and technical environments of the enterprise? Is it even feasible? Does the customer approve of the proposed solution? Have you defined the solution clearly so you can plan it efficiently? Check it against this list.
How robust and ready for launch is your project? Rate your own project on many success-indicator details in important areas using this extensive questionnaire. The results should help you discover your project's maturity level in terms of probabilities for success and where adjustments should be made.
What are the business drivers for enterprise project portfolio management, what are the consolidation challenges and what is the solution?
A project failure is seldom caused by unknown or mysterious factors. In fact, failure is often predictable based on symptoms and warning signs. And it can be prevented by following a disciplined approach to recovery. Here, an experienced project recovery specialist shares his methodology for fixing a failing initiative.
The elusive achievement of organizational alignment in corporate America is striking. What is needed is the development of an organizational structure and culture that dynamically self-adjusts and recalibrates to an ever-changing environment.
Contrary to a recent report, PMO longevity doesn't lead to greater success; PMO success leads to longevity. And PMOs that thrive share fundamental commonalities of alignment, from culture to customer, that they start getting right early in their existence. Here are six ways your PMO needs to be aligned.
This template can be used as a final Project Charter for small projects or as a quick summary of a longer-form Project Charter. In either case, it can be a great communications tool to create alignment and understanding.
Improved deliverable! The new CIS system isn't ready for prime time until business users have tested it. This plan provides guidance on the how, who, when, where, why and what of acceptance testing.
Check out, monitor, verify and log the quality of pile driving with this form.
Use this outline to help build a successful alignment and allocation of your team for your project and its initiatives.
Managing change can be chaotic unless your effort clearly manages the details, and who needs more chaos?
Given IT has played a significant role in business since the 1960s, it seems almost inconceivable that CIOs are still alignment challenged. Perhaps the challenge isn’t so much getting aligned but staying aligned given the pace and nature of change companies must cope with and adapt to in today’s global economies.
This five-part Employee Engagement and System Alignment Guidelines and Checklists allow you to look at how your employees find themselves engaged with or disengaged from their workplace in relation to their understanding of leadership values responsible for the workplace culture and philosophies.
Would you describe the culture at your organization as casual, chaotic or compliant. How about committed? High-performance companies like Google and Southwest Airlines leverage workforce commitment to drive goal alignment and engagement. The key is fostering an environment of positive accountability.
From Gartner PPM Summit 2007
This kickoff presentation, from Gartner Fellow and Research Vice President Bill Rosser, discusses how Portfolio Management has stimulated practices such as weighted business drivers, the efficient frontier, architecture as a criterion, and insightful ways to determine alignment.
This presentation is the supporting document for this video. It walks you through turning strategic objectives into operational realities. It covers topics such as conditioning your organization for change, discovering enterprise requirements, developing actionable objectives, and driving enterprise-wide alignment, and ends with a few models and techniques that drive the process.
From Gartner PPM Summit
For years CIOs have listed business-IT alignment as one of the top goals. The problem is that the PMO is often caught in the middle with a high level strategy on the one hand and dozens if not hundreds of detailed projects on the other. This workshop will offer some practical techniques and approaches to help bridge the gap.
Project managers avoid drama and unnecessary stress by understanding the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved, starting with their own. In Part 1 of this series, we outlined the reasons why we run projects and why defined roles are so important. Now let’s dive deeper into the “what and how” of the project manager role.
Welcome to IT Strategist's annual roundup of IT surveys. Here are the trends you need to know about to wind up 2009 and head into 2010.
Numerous studies over the years have shown that achieving business/IT alignment can lead to a unifying direction for a company, better leveraging of IT, improved communications, more efficient allocation of resources and increased competitive advantage. Yet, other studies reveal that few companies actually achieve alignment between their business and their most strategic weapon, technology. What they need is an integrated product management process that provides both vertical and horizontal alignment for developing products, systems or services.
From Gartner PPM Summit
Reseach Director David McClure discusses the vast benefits of IT portfolio management, when it's implemented with the requisite management commitment and discipline. He also addresses those challenges unique to public sector projects of this type.
Alignment is always an important issue - and not just on a business level. Organizational interests and personal interests must be aligned to really make things happen. Post-mortem focus - How did corporate performance reviews and individual development planning programs impact your project? This questionnaire will allow you to analyze these processes, develop conclusions and make recommendations.
Based on the best practices of winners and finalist from PM Solutions’ annual PMO of the Year award, a new book offers tips, insights and checklists for people management, performance measurement, strategic alignment, organization design and more.
Portfolio Management is about managing the flow of projects through their transitions into and out of the basket of projects being pursued by the organization--and thus integral to the activities found in the PMO. In order to keep PPM processes easy to understand and implement, they will be presented in terms of pre-, active and post-portfolio activities--which we explore here.
Does your organization have the right processes in place to support the next great idea? Once an evaluation and selection framework is in place, aligning an “idea pipeline” with the project portfolio is crucial. Otherwise, your next star project might not even get a chance to soar doomed or less-promising initiatives drain resources.
If your meetings don’t contribute more value than they cost, they should be cancelled. So how do calculate how much your meetings cost, and what’s the key to making them more effective and efficient?
A rocket won’t overcome gravity's pull without the right trajectory and energy. Likewise, a project needs systems in place at launch to have a chance of soaring. In this excerpt, we set the stage for a successful liftoff, which requires a shared understanding of team roles and objectives. An agile chartering framework can help.
This writer has realized that improvement is the wrong word. Instead, the concept should be Business Process Alignment. And IT is not alone in the quest for alignment--business goals are often misaligned with stakeholder expectations, policies rarely reflect alignment and business processes are in need of continuous recalibration.
Our yearly look at the state of IT, collected from various industry surveys. We'll take a look at everything from outsourcing and budgets to IT's move toward something greener.
Are all your resources working toward the same overall goals and strategies? Do people and departments know what is important to the organization? Do they have incentives to get there? Here are three criteria for prioritizing and approving work in a portfolio.
This template outlines a classic Project Charter with a focus on project definition and strategic ties. Risks and stakeholder needs are covered, but not in granular detail. It is appropriate for fairly low-risk projects where the goal is to get everyone on the same page up front.
Do PMOs have value? Arguably, yes. At least...sometimes. According to the results of recent research, the presence of a PMO was often a contributor to the attainment of organizational value. What was of particular concern, however, was the actual role of the PMO within the organization. Two broad types emerged within the research; find out what they are inside...
Coordinated execution of multiple projects elevates project management discipline at a new level. The third article in this series explores the project management roles and responsibilities above and beyond the single project boundary.
"One, two...the portfolio's coming for you! Three, four, better lock your door!" For a company to be successful, it needs to have a high-performance project portfolio. If it misses the mark, everyone is relegated to the B-movie horror of High Spending and Low (or No) Return for their Money.
All organizations face significant challenges in planning for and managing their IT portfolios. These challenges can be addressed, in part, by the use of systematic processes for selecting and evaluating IT investments. Based on a framework created for federal agencies, here are some key components to consider including in your project portfolio-scoring model.
If all goes well, 2010 offers a great opportunity for CIOs to catch up and re-establish their IT priorities within an overall business strategy. Here's how the wise CIO can take advantage of the opportunity.
The state of the CIO is stagnant, according to the latest industry surveys. We've taken a look at what they say and boiled them down to the essential message for CIOs: align or die.
What is worse for a CIO than a bad economy? An uncertain economy, and that's exactly where we'll be heading in 2011. CIOs will have to shift strategies--if not priorities--to weather the upcoming turbulence in the business atmosphere. Hold on tight and read on for advice to keep you on steady ground.
If you have not been a project manager on a contingent worker status, you're missing a great deal of experience. If you are ready to jump into the consultant PM life, what should you be aware of so that you are happy in the long run?
This detailed checklist helps you evaluate your planned IT project objectively and realistically against known project management concepts and standards--as well as common pitfalls. Does your project measure up?
As part of the annual Cutter Predicts series, a senior consultant says the role and related skill sets of business analysts will become more clearly defined, and the profession will continue to gain recognition.
Cross-project integration, executive buy-in and clearly communicated benefits continue to challenge PMOs. Adding traditional business measurement benchmarks such as mission alignment, domain authority and organizational readiness are needed to help project leaders deliver and report success quicker.
There is a subtle but important difference between measuring outcomes and measuring people. So what should we measure? Here are five measures that can bring about extraordinary results.
Many organizations understand the need to build and mature a business analysis center of excellence but are scratching their collective heads over how. Where do you start? What does it look like? Who owns it? How does it evolve? Here is some step-by-step guidance.
New benchmark study on project management offices shows consistent, two-year trend in delivering quantifiable value, with upwards of $400,000 in savings per project.
Recently we surveyed members of two OPM3 groups and asked them what they thought the generic reasons for using OPM3 may be, and how OPM3 should be used. We also asked them how various stakeholders within an organization may view these questions. Their answers provide interesting food for thought.
Many potential projects that are considered for funding will ultimately not be approved despite significant time and effort spent on their business cases. Starting with a Value Proposition document can help weed out the less promising projects before a more detailed business case is necessary.
For global organizations with diverse workforces and clients, maintaining a consistent level of project management excellence requires a permanent commitment to training. IT infrastructure provider EMC teamed with PMI to launch a talent development program for its project managers.
At the turn of the century most would have agreed with the notion that the CIO was gaining ground as a true leader within organizations. Now in 2010, the pendulum may be swinging in a different direction. Is the future of the CIO in question?
