Sven DiessnerProgram Planner| Lufhansa AirPlus Servicekarten GmbHNeu-Isenburg, Germany
Dear Community,
leading the PMO of a midsize financial services company (1000 employees) I am constantly challenged with the statement that a project is "mandatory". From a Portfolio Management perspective this gets difficult once you are facing too many "mandatories" and you have to set priorities.
I am looking for any valuable input that helps to develop a reasonable definition of what makes a project "mandatory".
Thanks and kind regards
Sven Saving Changes...
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Bernard GorePortfolio, Programme & Project Professional| NZ PoliceWellington, New Zealand
I'd definitely say you need to challenge this every time, as to what makes it mandatory as there is more than one thing that may make it so.
There are legitimate "mandatory" requirements - for example those required by legislation. One serious challenge you can pose is to ask what the cost limit is - and if they say there isn't one give them an outrageously high figure (something close to the total business annual turnover) and ask if they'd be OK if it ended up costing that!
More seriously, a PMO should as part of it's fundamental charter and establishment have categories of projects and how these are assessed. If "mandatory" is one of these categories there should be a very clear definition of what is allowed in that. Even if a project sponsor says their project is mandatory you should still have processes to follow, and the ultimate decision as to whether this goes ahead is an executive level portfolio governance body, not the PMO - you just provide the information and they make the call. Saving Changes...
Marcus KonitznyProject Manager| EXXETAFrankfurt Am Main, Germany
Hi Sven,
when do you call a project mandatory?
In my opinion this is a twofold definition:
Law
if a project is put in place to adapt something to changes in law where the legislation is providing a deadline by when to be compliant to it PLUS the legislation puts fines into effect if a company is not compliant and these fines for that given company would be so high that it threatens the company's survival - that is mandatory (this means that such projects where only a small or no fine is involved if you are not compliant are not mandatory)
Business change
if the company changes the way it does business with its partners and the new project is required for that change PLUS there is a definite deadline as to when the company will stop doing it the old way - that is mandatory
In summary:
mandatory projects are projects that have to be done by a certain deadline or the company is in serious danger of going out of business.
All other projects are not mandatory in my opinion, they may be - what is often used - called strategic but they are not mandatory. For instance if a company decides to start a new business branch and this is a strategic decision by the board of directors for securing the business in the future. Still all related projects would be "strategic" but not mandatory. The board of directors might call them mandatory but by definition it is securing "future" business in the light of growing and extending business not securing "current" business.
