Project Management 2.0

Situation: You want to create some interesting discussion around your PPM efforts... 

Enterprise PPM is all about driving positive business change - selecting the projects that will give your organization strategic advantage.  Often we look at candidate projects in a vacuum, meaning we "rack and stack" what's there.  We hook pre-defined projects up to strategic objectives to create "alignment".  This is often a politically driven process favoring the boss' ideas.  However, there are other ways of looking at project selection and prioritization.

Harvard Business School's Rosabeth Moss Kanter is one of the better known thought leaders of our time.  Her Innovation Pyramid tool helps you distribute your "project bets" across a range of risk and impact levels.  Here is how she describes it...

"Companies can develop an innovation strategy that works at the three levels of...the innovation pyramid: a few big bets at the top that represent clear directions for the future and receive the lion's share of investment; a portfolio of promising midrange ideas pursued by designated teams that develop and test them; and a broad base of early stage ideas or incremental innovations permitting continuous improvement."

Here's an example of one such pyramid in action.  Whirlpool distributes its resources by placing big bets on new businesses at the top of the pyramid, replacing products at the bottom and driving incremental change in between.

So take another look at your projects and see how they are distributed across this sort of pyramid.  At the very least you'll have some insight into the sort of organization you are a part of  - its tolerence for risk and the drivers of its decisions.

“I see some teams that use the word “agile” when they really mean “chaotic”.”

Dave Thomas