Pillar Four - Open the Door - Part II
From the People, Planet, Profits & Projects Blog
by Richard Maltzman,
Dave Shirley
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Dave Shirley
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Date
In the prior post I discussed the 3 Pillars of PPM (From scholar and all-around gentleman Jamal Moustafaev's book, Project Portfolio Management in Theory and Practice).
The Three Pillars of PPM
1. Projects selected must maximize the value for the company.
2. Projects selected must constitute a balanced portfolio.
3. The final portfolio of projects must be strategically aligned with the company’s overall business strategy.
Then I covered the fact that in an article by Javed Mohammad, Yu-Chun Pan, published just in 2022, and forwarded to me by graduated student Daria Risso as we work on her thesis for Politecnico di Torino, these authors imagine a fourth pillar: a pillar dedicated to sustainability and a holistic view. I like that pillar. A lot. I would like to give a shout out to my former Boston University student Daria Risso for pointing this article out to me.
In this post, I want to summarize the remainder of the article and, with the kind permission of the authors, to share some of the key points and figures. But please, don’t read only this blog post – please read their very-well assembled and meaningful article (you can find it available on ResearchGate at no charge – just click here).
The authors start by re-imagining the PPM Framework in the following phases, each of which is tinged, or perhaps better-stated, infused with long-term, holistic, responsible thinking:
- Strategic
- Criteria Selection
- Project Screening
- Portfolio Balancing
- Organizational Alignment or Portfolio
- Project Implementation
- Project Accountability
See the figure below (highlighting mine) to show how they have done a great job to avoid tacking-on sustainability, but rather building it in.
They have also put effort into criteria for project selection. It’s ironic that this comes up at a time when I happen to be teaching graduate PM students about exactly this – the selection of projects based on a multiplicity of criteria, including mathematical techniques like AHP:
In this step, the participants may use any multi-criteria decision-making method (MCDM), e.g., the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), that allows for pairwise comparison of variables thus establishing the relative importance of one variable against another. The process is repeated for the three categories of sustainability i.e., economic, environmental and social.
See the figure below – it assures that these criteria categories are included.
Figures above used with permission of the authors (thanks!).
I’ve been thinking (and writing) for a while about how some organizations have apparently misguided, or perhaps disconnected projects – projects like VW’s special sensors and software which led to Dieselgate while their C-Suite was indicating their desire to be a automotive leader in environmental sustainability. Somewhere there is a break in the connection between vision and execution – a break that I insist is at the PPM level. Perhaps Mohammad and Pan have found the fix for that breakage – a renewed focus on sustainability by those at the PPM level, those in powerful PMO positions who could filter out, with the right criteria, those projects which are misaligned from a sustainability perspective. If the organization is telling the world that sustainability is strategically important, that has to prevent projects which are producing sustainability disbenefits from ever being chartered.
Here is a piece of the authors’ conclusion:
It is recommended that other reporting tools should be applied to the proposed framework for a much wider understanding of these processes. Another area that requires research is whether sustainability is built into the framework bottom-up or top-down in the process and which method would be more effective. Finally, the proposal is open to contributions from the research, academic and practitioner community and should be viewed as an initial step towards developing a tried and tested framework that addresses some of the difficulties that organisations face when implementing sustainability into their project-related processes.
These authors, in my opinion, are one of a group on the leading edge of building sustainability thinking into projects with the intelligence and wisdom that comes from a PPM perspective. This is important. I urge you to read the article (that’s one reason I kept this blog post short – they say it all in their article!) and consider case studies or other suggestions that may help us as project leaders and citizens of the third rock from the sun to ‘get stuff done’ in efficient but also long-term effective ways.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: October 23, 2022 07:51 PM |
Permalink
Comments (6)
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Stéphane Parent
Self Employed / Semi-retired| Leader Maker
Prince Edward Island, Canada
I totally agree that sustainability should be part of parcel of everything we do, rather than an afterthought.
Hillel Selznick
Hillel Selznick| Hillel Selznick Art Studio
New York, Ny, United States
I also agree with the author. He has a great understanding of the topic.
Major Organizational Transformations Globally.. mindsets need to change.
Sustainability is a culture
Good read.
Thank you for sharing
Yes, it is a tremendous contribution to the deciders in recognize the variables of sustainability as so important as the others in this process of moulding a sustainable portfolio aligned with the expectations of the organization itself as well its stakeholders. Thanks for sharing, Mr. Maltzman.
Mishirika Scott
PMO Portfolio Manager, IT Strategic Initiatives| University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Greater Los Angeles Area, Ca, United States
@Richard M. and Dave S. ...well-written article and the visuals are tremendously helpful. The key phrase I'll start adopting today-- sustainability thinking. It will be interesting to see how sustainability thinking as an agile practice may intersect more closely in the future. Thanks!
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