It's one thing to implement a PPM solution for organizations that have already realized that they want and need PPM. These organizations have discovered that visibility into the project portfolio is essential to performance of the organization. They can see it. They can measure it. They can manage it. For organizations that have already crossed the line of "why I need PPM", the issues become tactical: speed, timing, scope and process. But that's not the whole story.
Many organizations still wonder what PPM means. They grapple with the most basic questions of all: "do I need this?" "What can it do for me?" "What happens if I don't have it?"
For the sake of this discussion, there are two types of organizations. Those that know they need it and those that don't. Sure, there may be a gray zone in the middle. These undecided organizations haven't quite made up their collective minds, but I will put them in the "those that don't" set. In other words, I lump the "maybe" set with the "no" set. I guess a logician would call them the "not-yes" set.
So now what? First of all, there is very little doubt at this point that implementing some level of PPM in an organization will improve their ability to do what they do, as well as their ability to do what they wish they could do. There is simply too much case evidence now to equivocate on that point. So how do they get going? How do they cross the line?
Here is my boring, practical answer: They need to create a snap shot of their portfolio and then step back and think about what it tells them. They need to ask three very basic questions:
What are we doing?
What could we be doing?
What should we be doing?
Then they need to cross the line.
Demian Entrekin
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