The 120VC Portfolio Management Model

Transcription

1 The 120VC Portfolio Management Model There are several layers that contribute to achieving the Vision of Project Portfolio Management. The workflow in the figure below starts at the bottom left and flows right across the Project Management layer and then moves up to the Program Management layer and resets to the left side of that and the subsequent layers. Each of these layers contributes to the achievement of the Vision. Each layer is explained in the following sections. 1 Printed: 09/06/1701/06/ VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

2 The Vision of Portfolio Management As mentioned before The Purpose of Project Portfolio Management is to enable C- Level executives to make data-driven decisions to allocate funds and team members across their portfolio to maximize return on investment, and to complete as many of the Projects in their Portfolio each year for their money. The example above shows a snapshot of a portfolio report. Try to imagine a report like this that contains over 100 projects. We have created a list of three project to keep the explanation simple. The bottom line financials above are the sum of all three projects. You can see that the name of each Project is listed on the very left followed by the name of the Project Manager, Project Start, and Finish Date. The next field is the Project Managers average Project Review Score. Because 120VC Project Managers all follow the 120VC Project Management Standard, it is possible to quality assure their work weekly and derive an average performance (or quality assurance) score over time. Ask yourself If all the Project Managers in a Program were planning, assessing Impediments, assessing Health, and Reporting differently, by what Standard would a Program Manager be able to quality assure their work? The answer is Chaos can NOT be quality assured and always ends badly! The reason we include the average review score in the Portfolio Report is simple. We have learned over time that any Project Manager with a review average of 95% or better is moving their Project forward as aggressively as possible. Now just because the Project Manager is rocking the Project, doesn t mean that impediments won t arise that impact Project Heath. It just means that you don t need to indict the Project Manager when that happens VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

3 The Project review score also tells executives that they can trust the data they are reviewing because it has been quality assured twice before making it into their report. The accuracy of quality assured data allows the executives to make confident, data-driven decisions from the report without having to ask 20 questions about each Project, use a secret decoder card, attend ten meetings per month and hire a private detective to get the information they need to make decisions. The Project Health field differentiates a Project in need from a healthy Project. When Project Managers label a Project Yellow or Red, they are generally communicating the need for Program or Portfolio level assistance to overcome an impediment preventing their Project from moving forward as aggressively as possible. Program and Portfolio Leadership use the Planned vs. Actual fields to prioritize the assistance they provide to unhealthy projects. A Portfolio may have five or more Red Projects at any given time. All need assistance, but which is the highest priority? For example: If I had a red Project that was planned to be 75% complete, but is actually only 50% complete, and I had another Red Project that was planned to be 30% complete and is actually 35% complete, the Red project that is trending behind should receive Program or Portfolio level assistance before the Red Project that is trending ahead of schedule. In the end, they may all get assistance. Planned vs. Actual is simply the mechanism to prioritize Projects with similar health status. Then there is the financial information associated with each Project. The Baseline Budget reflects the amount the Project Owner approved the Project Manager to spend. The Current Forecast is the amount the Project Manager currently believes is needed to complete the Project and the Variance is the difference between the two. Spent / Committed is the total amount spent and owed for goods and services and Remaining is self-explanatory. Any Project with Yellow or Red health will be accompanied with a solution / request for the support needed to get the Project back to Green VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

4 Now that I have explained the fields I would like to explain how to interpret the figure above. The first Project in the figure above is on schedule, but has an impediment on its critical path that requires resolution before it begins impacting the Projects end date and cost. In this case, the best possible solution is to hire an expert consultant for a week. Neither the Impediment or the $23,743 to resolve it were anticipated resulting in the negative variance between the Projects Baseline Budget and Current Forecast. When the negative Project cost variance is considered in correlation with the overall positive bottom line Portfolio variance of $86,592, the CEO or CFO can accept the negative variance to complete the Project in need. An alternative to accepting the negative variance is to cancel the Project. This would be a good decision if the Project was a Nice to Have vs. a Must Have for the organization. Since only $16,740 was spent to date, canceling, or postponing the Project would save the organization / Portfolio the remaining funds creating an additional Portfolio surplus of $57, VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

5 The Project Management Layer The Project Management layer breaks down into three functions: 1. An external Project Management Standard that the Project Manager uses to plan and manage their Projects. 2. A proprietary organizational methodology. The organizational methodology outlines required processes that the Project Manager executes on each Project to obtain the necessary support from the client organization. 3. A Project Plan and weekly Project & Budget reports. To explain the role of each of these components I am going to use an analogy. The Project Management Standard in the figure above is similar, in purpose, to the medical standard a doctor learns in medical school. Doctors learn a medical standard and are thoroughly evaluated before becoming board certified to practice medicine. Once certified, the doctor can work in any hospital and practice medicine on day one. A hospital s methodology defines how to prescribe meds, order labs tests and how to handle patient s files, but doesn t cover how to practice medicine. Hospital methodologies are different from hospital to hospital and state to state. Can you imagine a world where every hospital had their own proprietary medical standard? Doctors would have to study for months before being able to practice medicine in their new jobs. This would be very inefficient or No Bueno. For those of you that don t speak Southern Californian, No Bueno means Not Good. Essentially, the external Project Management Standard allows new Project Managers to be productive immediately and enables the Program and Portfolio layers. The organizational methodology should contain those procedures that are truly unique to an organization and anything that might give them a competitive advantage. Together, the Standard and Methodology serve as a road map for Project planning and management, which will result in a Project Plan and weekly reporting VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

6 The Program Management Layer The Program Management Layer breaks down into four functions: 1. Quality Assurance: Eliminates any risk to the Project associated with Project Management aptitude by performing daily and weekly quality assurance exercises. This sounds terrible if you jump directly to the worst possible scenario, but there are plenty of legitimate reasons that a competent Project Manager can get in over their head. It is the Program Managers job to realize this before it impacts the Project negatively and help the Project Manager keep the Project on track. Notice I didn t say, get the Project back on track? That s because the Key Performance Indicators allow Program Managers to proactively manage their Programs instead of waiting until something goes wrong to act. **Key Point: This level of quality assurance is not possible unless the Project Manager is following The Standard. If Project Managers adopt their OWN approach to planning, assessing impediments/health and reporting, the Program Manager would need a secret decoder card to interpret the success of each individual Project Manager on their team. In most organizations today, the lack of adoption of an external Standard is the primary reason why Program Managers are constantly fighting fires. Their Project Managers are all doing things differently and therefore the Program Manager can t effectively quality assure the chaos! 2. Escalation Management: It is inevitable that the Project Manager will encounter impediments that need to be escalated to the Project Owner or an Executive Stakeholder. An escalation is essentially the assignment of work upward to an executive. If you have ever done this, you have noticed how NOT excited the executive is to have unexpected work added to their priority list. The Program Managers role is to alleviate this additional work when possible by: Taking ownership of the escalation from the Project Manager Communicating the task to the executive, and Getting buy-in from the executive to complete the task. In this fashion, the Project Manager can stay focused on moving their project forward as aggressively as possible, while the Program Manager completes the task and closes the escalation so the executive can stay focused on their day job VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

7 3. Program Analysis: Again, because the Project Managers are all following The Standard, the data from each Project can be quality assured and is accurate. With accurate Project data, the Program Manager can effectively analyze their Program to rob from the rich Projects and give to the poor Projects to complete as many of the Projects in their Program each year for money that has been allocated. 4. Weekly Program Reporting: Once the Program Manager completes the weekly quality assurance process, they are 100% up to speed on their Projects, the decisions made, and why. They had a chance to ask questions to validate each decision, completed their Program Analysis and helped the Project Manager, when necessary. The Project information is compiled and sent to the Portfolio Layer for review and assistance if necessary. The Portfolio Management Layer The Portfolio Management Layer breaks down into three steps: 1. The Weekly Portfolio Meeting: During this meeting the Chief Portfolio Officer (CPO) or Portfolio Manager reviews the individual Program reports with each of their Program Managers. During the review, the CPO asks questions to understand the data in the report, the reasoning behind proposed solutions to get Red or Yellow projects back to Green, and coordinates the allocation of resources from healthy Programs to Programs in need. The three main things that get allocated across Programs are Money, People, and Slack. I am going to use a financial example to illustrate a situation that might require the allocation of resources from one Program to another. In this example, there are two Program Managers. Both have Projects that will go over budget by ten thousand dollars. One of the Program Managers has a surplus of funds in their Program that will cover the overage. Therefore, the CPO can simply accept the overage for that Program. The other Program Manager has no surplus and the overage will cause the entire Program to go over budget by ten thousand dollars. In the second scenario, the Portfolio Manager needs to determine if there is enough surplus across all Programs (the Portfolio) to cover the ten thousand dollar overage or cut projects to ensure the Portfolio doesn t come in over budget VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.

8 2. Executive Portfolio Report: Once the CPO is up to speed on all Projects, has validated the proposed solutions and has facilitated the necessary allocation of resources across the Portfolio, the Executive Portfolio Report is produced. The exercise in the Weekly Portfolio Meeting prepares the CPO to lead the Weekly Executive Portfolio Meeting with the CEO and CFO. 3. Weekly Executive Portfolio Meeting: In this meeting the CPO reviews the Red and Yellow Projects with the CEO and CFO. The CPO briefly explains the Impediments impacting those Projects and the proposed solutions. The CEO and CFO will ask validating questions to understand the solutions and will either approve them or provide alternates VC Holdings, Inc. All rights reserved.