Achieving a balance of executive involvement at the right level and on the right projects requires 5 key elements within a project portfolio management framework.

1. Standard project data, consistently collected and turned into meaningful dashboards and reports
If standard project data is consistently collected, dashboards and reports can provide information to executives about which projects are “on track” and which are “at risk”. At a minimum, dashboards and reports should show progress to date against milestones, budgets, and hours (actual vs. planned). This reduces guessing and wasted time and effort by executives.

2. The categorization of all projects into groups / tiers
We recommend that projects be categorized into groups or tiers; this helps identify and highlight the projects of greatest import to the executives. There are various ways to group or tier projects – this can be done simply by relating each project to the organization’s goals, or it can be done by weighing multiple project attributes for each project. These attributes include size of project (in dollars or hours), ROI, importance of the project, whether it is tied to a regulation, etc. The resulting tiers may be Critical, High, Medium, Low. Reports and dashboards can be organized by tier to drill down on the most important projects to the executive team.

3. Clear project / portfolio governance, with a clear path for the escalation of risks, issues & decision-making
Now that executives have visibility into the projects requiring the most oversight, how do we make sure that they still don’t get pulled into day-to-day project decisions? A clear project and portfolio governance structure with a clear set of rules for escalating only the most important challenges is critical. Integrated project change management ensures that project teams have the tools and process to apply these rules and determine whether they need to escalate a project challenge. The project team should escalate only those decisions that they cannot make to the next level of governance (who, in turn, will escalate the decision if they cannot resolve it).
 
For most organizations, we recommend at least three levels of project governance for change decisions, risks, and key issues. Level one is the project team, level two is the department or area leaders for the project, and level three is the executives of the organization along with the affected department and IT leads. These guidelines also empower project managers and project teams to make the important day-to-day decisions. 

4. A phased-gating or project check-in process for all projects
As projects are planned and then executed, we recommend a consistent process where project teams are required to “check-in” or obtain approval to move to the next project phase or milestone. The project group or tier should determine who needs to be involved in the check-in or approval to advance meeting. For instance, a low tier project may only require the involvement of the responsible IT manager and the business owner. The more critical the project, the more executive oversight is required to ensure that a project does not get too far along without the perspectives of IT leads, stakeholders, and executives (e.g., level three governance). 

5. A corporate culture that encourages the self- reporting of risks / issues
​If an organization accepts that even the “best laid plans” sometimes need to be revised and that everyone can “learn from their mistakes,” project managers and teams are more likely to raise the flag and bring to attention a challenge. Adding project health indicators to the regularly collected project data is a great way to allow project teams to self-report whether their projects face issues. Project health indicators use established project parameters (overall project health, project budget, resources, etc.) and magnitudes to alert to a possible or existing challenge. For instance, project budget health indicator may be set from green to orange if the project team suspects that their budget will be impacted or changed, but by less than 5%, and red if over 5%.

In conclusion, ensuring a consistent management of the project portfolio on an ongoing basis means establishing a framework that enables decisions to be made at the lowest level possible, and only escalated if there is a need for executives to get involved, such as for a change to a mission critical project, resource availability or needs, budget issues, etc. Dashboards and reports which include health indicators ensure that project challenges are identified early and that executives can be involved in resolving important project challenges sooner than later.

Take a look at the first two blogs in this series:
An Overview of Portfolio Planning & Management (PPM)
Annual Portfolio Planning & Strategic Alignment

To have a robust and worthwhile annual planning effort requires a lot of preparation and planning on the part of project managers, business owners of the projects, IT, and the PMO. We recommend setting a standard for the information to be reviewed for each project. At a minimum, all projects should have a “business case” / ROI, tangible and intangible benefits, a basic budget, and a high-level estimate of hours/effort. 

The executive team will need to provide the strategic goals and objectives for the organization and the portfolio budget for the year by LOB or organization. The Executive team will also need to force-rank the projects so that there is general agreement on which projects are more critical than others. We have developed approaches to force ranking and will suggest some considerations and techniques in an upcoming blog in this series. 

Throughout the planning sessions, the executives should expect to review all projects at a high-level and then discuss and debate them to finally force-rank them according to how they align with the organization’s goals and objectives. They will need to make some not so easy decisions about what can and cannot be tackled within the annual portfolio budget. The team should also consider resource needs and key resource availability for the year (this will help resource planning for the year). 

The result of the planning session should be a high-level portfolio roadmap with the order of various projects in time, and the high-level costs and resource requirements.

​Although time-consuming, the end-product, a well thought out annual portfolio plan, is well worth it. It sets the course for your portfolio of projects, provides your organization with clarity around the strategic goals and objectives and how the projects align with them and “fit” in the timeline for the year. 

Take a look at our first post in the series: An Overview of Portfolio Planning & Management (PPM)

The strategic role of the executive team is to ensure the following:

• Projects in the portfolio are aligned with the strategies and goals of the organization
• On a regular cadence, re-optimize the portfolio when strategies and/or goals change
• Re-prioritize projects as goals change
• The PPM framework provides information at the right level of detail at the right times

ANNUAL PORTFOLIO PLANNING
We recommend an annual portfolio planning effort involving executives from the highest levels of the organization. This is a critical strategic opportunity for the organization to build the best portfolio of projects to meet the goals for the upcoming year. It involves reviewing all current and proposed projects against a set of criteria, including the organization’s strategic goals, which are quantified and then force-ranked or plotted on a matrix.

PORTFOLIO OPTIMIZATION
Because very little stays the same over time, organizations must readjust their priorities throughout the year; additionally, in an increasingly agile environment, project plans and outcomes may evolve as well. Consequently, we recommend the executive team optimize their portfolio of projects on a regular basis, say quarterly, to balance the portfolio based on any changes to the organization’s strategic goals, ongoing risks, and new/proposed projects. 

PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT
Project information needs to be made available at the right granularity for those managing the projects daily, those coordinating multiple/related projects, and those overseeing the entire portfolio. 

PORTFOLIO GOVERNANCE
A governance structure that starts with the project team and provides clear avenues and criteria for the escalation of risks/issues, and proposed changes for decision-making, ensures that only those that need to be involved in project decisions are involved — no matter how small or large the project. 

CULTURE
And finally, ​a no-blame organizational culture, one where mistakes are accepted as par for the course and viewed as opportunities for learning and improvement, ensures project managers and teams bring to light project challenges and risks that can be addressed before they snowball.

Our first step was to interview stakeholders within the organization, as well as IT leaders and IT staff. With our survey, we wanted to understand current perceptions of IT and be able to substantiate or refute them with real data. We then identified all the functional areas within IT, developing specific, actionable questions within each area. Finally, we tested the survey to make sure that all the questions were easily understood. The golden rules are:

• Make it short & sweet (the questions are straightforward, and the survey takes less than 10 minutes to complete)
• Make it anonymous
• Make each question about one thing
• And make it actionable!

The first year the survey was deployed, the results clearly showed how the organization perceived IT and its services. With analysis of the survey data, we were able to provide the Client with recommended areas for attention. This made it possible for the CIO to not only decide what improvement efforts her teams needed to make, but also which were most critical to address. The first year’s survey provided the baseline against which we measure future years. Each subsequent year, depending on organizational and IT goals and efforts, a few questions were sometimes added, but just for that year. Over the years, the survey results have provided key focus areas to be tackled by cross-functional teams and have resulted in significant measurable improvements. 

By deploying the survey each year, we have been able to trend our Client’s data year-over-year and show progress and identify new or ongoing areas needing attention. Not only is IT soliciting feedback from its “customers” to better understand their needs, but they are also demonstrating that they “hear” these needs through the ongoing implementation of improvement efforts. As IT continues to ask for feedback about how to be a better partner to the organization, the organization has also increasingly included IT in its planning and strategy meetings – a true win-win. 

But how can you use this information? How can you make sense of it all? What is significant? And what is anecdotal? There are a few ways we quantify and illustrate this information. 

One way is to identify key words and/or key themes mentioned repeatedly throughout the threads of responses. From the frequently repeated words, a Word Cloud can be created, with great visual impact showing just the positive feedback or the negative feedback, or both. As the example above illustrates, “Helpful” was the key word used most to describe the IT Services of an organization, followed by “Responsive” and “Great.” The most common negative key word/key theme among the open-ended responses was “Slow Response” followed by “Takes Too Long” and “Insufficient Coverage.”

A second way to quantify open-ended feedback is to categorize responses into all positive responses, responses that have both positive and negative content, and finally responses which are only negative. In the figure below, we were able to trend, over multiple years of open-ended responses, the proportion of positive, both positive and negative, and only negative responses to the statement, “Please give us your feedback about the IT area as a whole, and/or on specific IT services.” By trending the respondents’ perceptions of IT services over time, we had another data point to measure the success of IT efforts and services. If you see significant change in the responses over time, this may be linked to some other transformations within the company such as a major, all-consuming project, a large organizational change, etc.

​There are other ways to quantify and/or illustrate open-ended feedback. The key is to recognize and then capitalize on the tremendous value of open-ended responses in surveys, which, with a small amount of effort, can be extracted, quantified, and acted-upon.

​Assuming you performed a well-executed Planning Phase, you would have identified who will be affected, what will change, and how they will change. Now you can move forward with the steps in Phase 2, MAKING THE CHANGE:

COMMUNICATION

• Communicating about the “Case for Change,” and following the Stakeholder Engagement and Communications Plans

MEASURING

• Tracking, Measuring & Communicating the progress of the change (using KPIs, gap analyses, Dashboards, etc.)

MANAGING PEOPLE/SKILLS ISSUES

• Working with HR to make sure that job descriptions are updated, hiring plans are developed, and training is arranged

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT

• Finally, it is critical to ensure that any feedback is funneled to the right individuals that can resolve issues or tweak the change effort. An example of a tweak might be around training needs – should there be more or less training than originally planned?

This phase is typically the longest and needs to be executed repetitively throughout the effort to ensure consistent communication, measurement, and improvement.  Note that making the change is necessary but not sufficient; you will need to continue to reinforce the change to ensure adoption. 

What elements are most critical to you when your organization is making a change?