Implementing a Mature Portfolio Management Practice
Do you know if bad projects are edging out good projects?
Do you have visibility across your organization?
"As many as 75 percent of IT organizations have little oversight over their project portfolios and employ non-repeatable, chaotic planning processes." —CIO Magazine
Mature portfolio management can help gain control of your projects and deliver meaningful value to the business. Portfolio management is a holistic view of overall strategy by ensuring that both IT and agency leaders vet proposed projects, aligning them with strategic objectives.
Why You Need Portfolio Management
Think about how investments are managed in your company; do any of the following scenarios ring true? Million-dollar projects, which may or may not match the company's objectives, are awarded to business units headed by the squeakiest executives; weak governance structures mean that business executives don't have clear ideas of what they're approving and why; the CIO ends up selling projects that should be generated and sold by line-of-business heads; the company doesn't build good business cases for projects or it doesn't do them at all; and there are redundant projects.
Strategy and Process
The IT portfolio is managed like a financial portfolio; riskier strategic investments (high-growth stocks) are balanced with more conservative investments (cash funds), and the mix is constantly monitored to assess which projects are on track, which need help and which should be shut down.
- Gather a project inventory that includes overview, schedule and budget
- Align projects with strategic objectives
- Categorize (portfolio elements) and prioritize with turnkey criteria:
- Identify four to seven strategies (i.e., reduce risk, increase reliability of infrastructure).
- Determine one or two metrics per strategy
- Weight the metrics
- Keep scoring simple (i.e., scale of one to five)
- Implement Management Decision-making with a Senior stakeholders review projects within +/- 20 percent of the resource line
- Continue to actively manage the IT portfolio throughout execution
Governance and Control
Even though the methodology is sound and understood, some organizations still do IT Portfolio Management poorly. Within a poor IT portfolio governance structure, line-of-business executives do not have a clear idea of their IT investments; the CIO ends up advocating various projects. Others fail to develop good business cases or don't do them at all. Strong IT Portfolio Management governance and control can Evolve Your Business:
- Maximize value of IT investments while minimizing risk
- Improve communication and alignment between the OCIO and other agency leaders
- Encourage agency leaders to think organizationally, not only about their IT, taking responsibility for the impact of projects
- Budget formulation and planning phase will schedule resources more efficiently
- Reduce the number of duplicate investments and make it easier to kill redundant and poorly performing projects
Education — Training and Tools
There is no single tool; no silver bullet for IT Portfolio Management. Evoke has Lean Six Sigma certified consultants with extensive experience mapping current IT portfolio management processes, identifying gaps, facilitating development and implementation of a revised process. We will conduct training to smooth implementation, deliver customized handbooks for broader learning, and implement automation where appropriate to continuously streamline and mature the IT Portfolio Management process for your agency.
Evoke Exhibit 300 Solution
OMB is tightening its control. Are you ready?
"Agencies can expect changes in how they evaluate the effectiveness of their major programs and recommendations in the fiscal 2010 budget proposal to eliminate some programs." —Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
There is far more to IT Portfolio Management and CPIC than the Exhibit 300, but it is a primary concern with many of our clients every year. Managing via the Exhibit 300 is a little like letting the tail wag the dog; each program should have intimate knowledge of their management fundamentals first, using that information to populate the Exhibit 300. There is more to the game than just knowing the rules of OMB and the A-11.
We will develop a strategy to respond to external mandates, develop a mature process that puts your organization's best interest first, facilitate the implementation of necessary governance to ensure successful processes are repeated, and educate your staff to ensure that they have all the necessary tools and skills.
Our Solution to the Exhibit 300:
How to build a business case. Starting with a blank Exhibit 300, we will walk you through the steps to building your first Exhibit 300. If you need a full blown, commercial business case with extensive rigor, we will teach you as we build it.
How to build a better business case. Utilizing our detailed Exhibit 300 Improvement Plan templates, we have had enormous success getting clients to Green with OMB. In one case, despite having 90% of their investments on the OMB Management Watch List, we helped an agency get to 100% Green in less than a year.
How to track performance. We know how OMB evaluates business cases. We will provide a step-by-step interpretation of how to get to green with OMB E-Gov. (OMB Memorandum M-04-24)
Consulting Services. Evoke Research and Consulting (Evoke) is an independent consulting practice and plans to stay that way. Our independence enables us to offer a fresh approach to program management consulting, helping our clients drive projects to completion effectively and efficiently while simultaneously finding cost savings and cost avoidance.
The Evoke CPIC solution provides the following:
- Industry experts capable of working with any tool to build a balanced and optimized portfolio; and provide a solid repeatable process for gathering accurate and complete data.
- A consistent and visible decision-making capability for the management of all enterprise-level investments throughout the entire investment life cycles.
