We're Talking About What, Exactly?

 

Back when I was working for Advanced Sciences, Inc., the company sent its upper management to a retreat in North Carolina to take a week-long class in Project Management. Since the attendees came from four different offices scattered around the United States, there were some mild dialect differences that led to a couple of entertaining interactions. But there was one phrase that seemed to be employed a lot, without a consensus on its meaning. That phrase: “slam dunk.”

To around half the attendees – those who, no doubt, either played basketball or at least kept up with a favorite team – the meaning was clear: a can’t-miss shot, something rather automatic. The other half seemed to think the term meant something analogous to getting slammed, or, put another way, to encounter excessive resistance, often from an internal source, for executing a certain approach to resolving a problem. Now, I was aware that the phrase meant very different things to different people, but I believe very few of the other attendees were so aware. Some of the outcomes were hilarious.

Manager with definition A: “So, if we can get our schedule baselines in good shape, then any government audit of them would be a slam dunk.”

Manager with definition B: “So, we don’t want that!”

Manager with definition A: “Don’t want what?”

Manager with definition B: “A government audit.”

Manager with definition A: “But I just got done saying it was something of a sure thing.”

Manager with definition B: “Like death or taxes.”

Manager with definition A: “What’s like death or taxes?”

Manager with definition B: “The government audit.”

Manager with definition A: “Of our baseline?”

Manager with definition B: “Yeah, I was agreeing with you.”

Manager with definition A: “Oh. Okay.”

Something similar happened when I was sent on a train-the-trainer class of a certain scheduling software platform that was attempting an expansion into portfolio management, which just happens to be this month’s Gantthead theme.  This expansion involved including in the scheduling software’s capabilities things like timesheet routing and approval, travel expense routing and approval, miscellaneous expense routing and approval – in other words, things that traditionally fell within the realm of the General Ledger, and Asset Management. At the end of the course, I and my colleagues were revealed to the president of this software company (his name may be recognizable to some of my readers, which would lead to an easy ID of the software I’m talking about, so I can’t be specific here. Sorry.) to be, not subcontract training company employees, but one of this software company’s larger customers. An audience with the president and his top veeps was hastily arranged, and our opinions of the new capabilities invited.

“You are established as a platform for project management information” I began. “If you wanted to expand your capability, you should have sought to perform more diverse PM functions, like Earned Value reporting formats, or creating the Basis of Estimate. Instead, you have expanded into areas usually covered by an organization’s General Ledger. So, if some company were to use your new portfolio management capabilities, would these supplant their existing systems? Or augment them? Was there any thought about how this new portfolio management system would interact with the General Ledger?”

I could almost see the light bulbs going off in the heads of the veeps, who were seated to either side and slightly behind the president. At least I was resonating with somebody.

“We’re confident that these new features will enhance our software’s ability to provide portfolio management capabilities…” the president began, as what he was saying began to strongly resemble the muffled trumpet used as a stand-in for whenever an adult communicates with Charlie Brown or one of his friends in the Peanuts specials. It seemed to me that an awful lot of effort went into this software’s upgrade without everyone involved being clear on the exact definition of “portfolio management.” It was almost as if this organization’s leaders were targeting information streams involved in executive management decision support, and coding them in to the existing system as adjuncts without really evaluating the valid components of portfolio management.

In my subsequent posts this month, I will explore the proper role of both the portfolio management function, and its appropriate supporting information streams, as well as those systems that pretend to provide the portfolio management function, but fall laughably short, and why. Yeah, yeah, I know – there are a lot of definitions of “portfolio management” out there, and many of them sound quite reasonable. They are, however, either wrong, or, at best, incomplete. I actually have the complete answer, and it’s shown in my recently-released must-have book, Game Theory in Management (http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=641&calctitle=1&pageSubject=2064&title_id=11616&edition_id=11979). Given the number of organizations hawking portfolio management capabilities, and the frequency with which they get it wrong, it should prove to be an interesting October.