PPM Perspectives

Resource management vs. resource scheduling

Human resources are the biggest expense in IT. So it's no wonder resource management is getting a lot of attention. Earlier today I asked Paul Ewry, an Innotas' consultants with years of PPM experience, what is the typical way in which he has seen companies determine if they have the resources they need for a project? He laughed: "Funny you should ask, in over 80% of the meetings in which I have asked that question, after a few moments of silence, somebody licks their finger and sticks it up in the air, followed by nervous laughter from everybody."  I'd love to hear other examples. But there has to be a better way.

Corporate PPM – reality or fantasy?

I recently attended an industry conference on PPM in Orlando. At the conference I talked with many large companies who have bought PPM solutions at the “corporate” level and are frustrated. One corporate CIO’s story was something like this:

Five years ago we were sold a “site license” to one of the big PPM vendor’s products. We were promised the grand vision of a single corporate IT dashboard that would bring all of our projects, resources, time, requests, etc all into one place. This would allow us to make the most optimal business decisions about new corporate initiatives, staffing and resource allocation, and duplicate project elimination.

 

Project Management vs Project Portfolio Management

I have been involved in a couple of our new customer implementations recently. As a result I have been looking through some of the materials that our services team uses during implementations and I discovered what I consider to be an interesting presentation that is targeted towards project managers. What I found interesting is that it outlines the key differences between Project Management and Project Portfolio Management (PPM), and what you can expect from PPM, in a very clear and no nonsense way. And it sets the stage for what one should expect from any PPM system.

EPMO - we got it all wrong!

There is a a great disruption going on: while IT-based PMOs are trying to take their structured, PMI approach to the rest of the enterprise, the lines of business are saying "No way!"
So, what is the skill set required to have a working enterprise PMO?  And do companies really need one? 

How Large?

How large does my Organization have to be before I should have a Project Management Office (PMO) and follow Project Portfolio Management (PPM) processes?

I was thinking about this question a few days ago in the context of Innotas the company. We aren’t a large company (yet!) and some people might say that we have only a few initiatives and manageable staff size and therefore there is no need for a PMO or PPM processes. We all know what the company is working on and why. We all understand the decision criteria used to determine if we’re going to take on a project or not, and we all understand the tradeoffs of those decisions.

On Time On Scope?

I was speaking with an experienced product development manager and we discussed a recent survey from one of the big analysts about project success or failure.  He said something that I recognized immediately.  "These stats about project failure are completely misleading."  He didn't use the word "misleading" but I can't print the word he used.

"Here's the problem with all of those studies...

Supply and Demand

In a June 25, 2007 article by Christopher Koch, CIO magazine interviews two McKinsey consultants about a trend to separate Supply from Demand within the IT organization. The article is titled "Why IT Executives Split Staffs to Create Supply, Handle Demand for Technology Services." While I'm not sure the article answers the question of Why, it does at least make the claim that this trend is happening, and that the positive impacts are substantial.