Project Portfolio Management Tools and Infrastructure
Provide the necessary tools and infrastructure supports to track, communicate, and assist with the progress of project portfolio components.
Improvement Planning
Practices-Outcomes-Metrics (POM)
Representative POMs are described for Project Portfolio Management Tools and Infrastructure at each level of maturity.
- 1Initial
- Practice
- Leverage staff expertise and office tools-based templates to get started (e.g. basic to-do lists, tracking spreadsheets, basic ROI concepts, etc.).
- Outcome
- Basic guidance and assistance is available quickly.
- Metric
- Number of templates being used.
- Practices
- Emulate others' successes.
- Use basic tools that are known to work in the space.
- Outcome
- Basic guidance and assistance is available quickly.
- Metric
- Number of adapted templates from outside the organization.
- 2Basic
- Practice
- Provide basic task, project, and portfolio management tools.
- Outcome
- Tracking of project interferences, scheduling, and estimates is more accurate; and records of past performance can be analysed for improvement.
- Metric
- Number of project portfolio components planned in project planning software such as KANBAN wall, etc.
- Practice
- Provide user training on at least basic features.
- Outcome
- Better use of the supplied tools facilitates better communications, and accuracy.
- Metrics
- Number of users provided training.
- Number of users to be provided training.
- 3Intermediate
- Practice
- Train staff to select, rank, rate, and prioritize project portfolio components based on strategic contributions (via the toolset).
- Outcome
- Encoding ranking, rating, and selection rules into the available tools improves transparency and accuracy.
- Metric
- Number of trained and number of untrained staff.
- Practice
- Raise staff proficiency on the tool usage and tool supported methods and techniques.
- Outcome
- Enhanced usage of the toolset improves accuracy and enhances the range of complexity that the project portfolio management capability can execute.
- Metrics
- Number of staff who have received advanced training.
- Number of staff who have not received advanced training.
- 4Advanced
- Practice
- Support agile change request responses to strategy changes or disruptions to project execution.
- Outcome
- Tool sets that automatically identify impacted stakeholders or task assignments can enhance communications and reassignments following change.
- Metric
- Open and close elapsed times for issues.
- Practice
- Support ‘what-if’ analysis capabilities to analyse decision impacts before selecting the best decision options.
- Outcome
- More options can be tested quickly to identify the best option for selection.
- Metric
- The number of options tested using ‘what-if’ scenario testing.
- 5Optimized
- Practice
- Provide stakeholders with appropriate levels of access to portfolio decisions and priority changes.
- Outcome
- Transparency about decisions and prioritization is supported, as this is essential to maintaining understanding, buy-in, and support for the current work plans.
- Metric
- Number of stakeholders with access to portfolio management decision criteria and decision data.
- Practice
- Provide stakeholders with appropriate levels of access to portfolio resource utilities and information on project execution status.
- Outcome
- Transparency on resource utilization and project execution performance is supported, as this is essential to maintaining understanding, buy-in, and support for the current work plans.
- Metric
- Number of stakeholders with access to portfolio management resource utility data.