Comments on: Deficiencies with programme/portfolio management? http://www.e8consulting.com/blog/practiceareas/deficiencies-with-programmeportfolio-management e8 Consulting blog Mon, 07 Dec 2009 16:41:12 -0700 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: Raymond Young http://www.e8consulting.com/blog/practiceareas/deficiencies-with-programmeportfolio-management/comment-page-1#comment-22 Raymond Young Tue, 18 Aug 2009 06:54:17 +0000 http://www.e8consulting.com/blog/?p=418#comment-22 Jed, You raise a number of good points but I really have to take you to task for a couple of comments: 1. Your research could not possibly have been conducted over “the past 20 decades”. I think you have slipped into marketing speak and distorted by a factor of 10? :) 2. I think you will find that the project investments in the Victorian and NSW public sectors were made with real money on real projects. I include references to the seminal articles in the field because I want to provide common reference points to advance the discussion. Academic rigour has value in this particular case because the problem has persisted over a long period. Rigour is needed to cut through hype and find the underlying causes and solutions to a problem. I have my doubts whether another methodology is the solution but I remain optimistic and open-minded. What I do know is that MSP is actually very good. It acknowledges that flexibility is required to implement strategy. The weakness is that the detailed techniques recommended by MSP seem not to be flexible enough to handle a strategy evolving over time as the business environment changes. For the rest I agree with you that the processes in most organisations destroy more value than they create. Jed,

You raise a number of good points but I really have to take you to task for a couple of comments:

1. Your research could not possibly have been conducted over “the past 20 decades”. I think you have slipped into marketing speak and distorted by a factor of 10? :)

2. I think you will find that the project investments in the Victorian and NSW public sectors were made with real money on real projects. I include references to the seminal articles in the field because I want to provide common reference points to advance the discussion. Academic rigour has value in this particular case because the problem has persisted over a long period. Rigour is needed to cut through hype and find the underlying causes and solutions to a problem.

I have my doubts whether another methodology is the solution but I remain optimistic and open-minded. What I do know is that MSP is actually very good. It acknowledges that flexibility is required to implement strategy. The weakness is that the detailed techniques recommended by MSP seem not to be flexible enough to handle a strategy evolving over time as the business environment changes.

For the rest I agree with you that the processes in most organisations destroy more value than they create.

]]> By: Jed Simms http://www.e8consulting.com/blog/practiceareas/deficiencies-with-programmeportfolio-management/comment-page-1#comment-18 Jed Simms Mon, 17 Aug 2009 07:05:03 +0000 http://www.e8consulting.com/blog/?p=418#comment-18 The new Project Delivery Science™ addresses the issues above; tightly linking strategy and projects/programs, building the necessary governance, portfolio and program skills within the requisite processes. Our research over the past 20 decades, conducted on real projects not articles, has found that the processes currently in use by most organisations destroy more value than they deliver. They are just not value delivery focused. We cannot blame the project managers as the organisations themselves need to take the lead and manage their portfolios, programs and projects effectively to directly implement strategy. But Prince2, MSP, PMBOK and other methodologies do not deal with these aspects and leave huge gaps in the processes that allow the available value to fall through. The new Science, to be launched in September 2009, addresses these concerns and, for the first time, fully equips all levels of the organization, up to and including the Board, to perform their roles effectively, knowing what to do, when and why. Using the new Science we have consistently doubled the realised returns from projects. Now that's a start! The new Project Delivery Science™ addresses the issues above; tightly linking strategy and projects/programs, building the necessary governance, portfolio and program skills within the requisite processes.
Our research over the past 20 decades, conducted on real projects not articles, has found that the processes currently in use by most organisations destroy more value than they deliver. They are just not value delivery focused.
We cannot blame the project managers as the organisations themselves need to take the lead and manage their portfolios, programs and projects effectively to directly implement strategy. But Prince2, MSP, PMBOK and other methodologies do not deal with these aspects and leave huge gaps in the processes that allow the available value to fall through.
The new Science, to be launched in September 2009, addresses these concerns and, for the first time, fully equips all levels of the organization, up to and including the Board, to perform their roles effectively, knowing what to do, when and why.
Using the new Science we have consistently doubled the realised returns from projects. Now that’s a start!

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