From Project Management to Management by Project, or by Portfolio, to be precise

1
From Project Management to Management by Project,
or by Portfolio, to be precise

• Gunes Sahillioglu
• 07799621689
• gunes_at_excellix.com

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Where were we?

• Current Business Management techniques are based
  on the learnings from the early days of 1900.
• We learned about divisions, marketing, brand
  management, stock management, HR, workflow
• Project Management evolved from large
  construction and military initiatives from mid
  1960 / 70 s to date.
• We learned to run projects, programmes,
  portfolios we learned to structure tasks and
  generate benefits

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So what happened?

• At least twice in the last 100 years,
• Business suffered, shrunk, almost halted.
• Are the roots of the current difficulties in
  failures at project level?
• How many time we have come here to talk about
  Why projects fail?
• NO, the root causes are at business management,
  governance and decision level.

4
Can the conventional management structures
survive the 21st century?

• I doubt very much that vertically integrated,
  departmentalised classic company structures will
  be with us much longer
• Large departments will tend to go towards pools
  of skilled resources, forming cells / teams to
  tackle specific tasks, achieve specific goals.
• The move towards project based organisation
  will gather pace

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Project based organisation?

• THINK
• At enterprise business planning level, Project
  Portfolio Management is probably the best tool to
  select the best initiatives to fund and drive.
• DO
• At delivery level, Project Management techniques
  are well placed to make things happen in an
  orderly fashion.

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The trend

• Organisations have already started to move
  towards concepts such as shared service centres,
  outsourced services etc. This prepares the ground
  for a pure project based organisation by taking
  away the inevitable administrative verticals
• They will need to be even better organised to
  respond to changes and downturns.

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Agile organisations

• The key to organisational agility relies on a
  number of points
• Decision agility
• Execution agility
• Decision agility requires a transparent decision
  making mechanism that is dynamic (PPM)
• Execution agility requires multi-skilled and
  flexible work force (project based teams). They
  usually benefit from a mixture of internal and
  external resources.

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So, changes on two fronts?

• At decision / strategy level ? Portfolio based
  management (PPM at board level)
• At delivery structure / operational level ?
  project based teams
• The above will be strengthen by the extensive use
  of the collaboration tools (semi-virtual project
  teams)

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Opportunities and flip side

• Porting the good practices of project and
  portfolio management from its current space
  (project world) to Business world is an advantage
  for project professionals
• This will bring a healthy level of rigor,
  discipline, scrutiny and governance to business
  decisions
• Project portfolio professionals will need to lead
  the move and act as the champions of this change.

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Portfolio-centric approach to management

• Establish a portfolio of all change activities
  that compete for resources within the company.
  This should not be limited to new products, or IT
  initiatives. It should include new infrastructure
  and even facilities.
• Apply portfolio optimisation and strategic
  alignment techniques by running scenarios.
• Prepare pools of talent to execute the projects
  in the portfolio.

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Structural transformation
Classic Organisation
Business Units
Shared services
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PPM, balancing act under pressure
Costs
Constraints
innovation
Pressure to change
Resistance to change
PPM
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Portfolio-centric Management Process
Strategic Objectives
Portfolio alignment
Mission Statements
Projects Programmes
What-if scenarios
X
Costs
Benefits
Portfolio Benefit Realisation
Enterprise budget
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How easy is it?

• It requires vision and determination
• It requires ownership and drive
• It requires courage
• But, when the turnaround options narrow
  dangerously, somehow courage emerges!
• It is much better to change to an agile
  organisation before hitting the buffers.

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• THANK YOU
• and
• GOOD LUCK
• ( we all need
  some these days!)