Choosing the right projects to deliver organisational targets
Organisations often have a portfolio of projects that they are managing to deliver business improvements. The challenge is for them to choose the right set of projects to maximise benefit and to deliver their targets. Portfolio modelling supports businesses in making these decisions by:
- Defining consistent measures for reporting and tracking of a portfolio of projects and programmes
- Linking contributions of individual projects to key business outcomes, portfolio constraints, and project dependencies to reduce risks to portfolio benefits delivery
- Scenario analysis to optimise delivery of business and financial targets within constraints of budget and time
Our Approach
- Scope: Define the portfolio and the criteria by which projects are being assessed, and agree scoring approach to incorporate different aspects of project benefits
- Assessment: Analyse the project data including client interviews and assessments of each project’s delivery targets, risks to successful delivery, and dependencies between projects
- Data Capture: Capture data in standard templates, and use to develop and populate portfolio model
- Modelling: Use the model to analyse the overall portfolio and individual project contributions to the portfolio benefits for overall delivery against target
- Scenario analysis: Perform scenario analysis with the model to maximise portfolio outcomes and minimise risk within financial, time and resource constraints
Business Benefits
- Understanding of how projects contribute to business targets
- Analysis of progress towards delivering business targets through projects
- Mapping of project interdependencies, enabling better management of programmes and portfolio
- Development of tools to evaluate projects using key financial and non-financial parameters, enabling portfolio views of progress and identification of portfolio risks and issues
- Understanding of portfolio delivery capability, and exploration of ‘what if’ scenarios to maximise benefits delivery and minimise risk
- Creating a framework for recording, assessing and reporting the progress of portfolio of projects in a standardised way
- Demonstrating benefits of portfolio management for further development, e.g. implementation of enterprise-wide web-based portfolio management tools
Related Success Stories
Project Portfolio Management Modelling
Created a framework for portfolio evaluation, analysed performance of portfolio of IT projects, and implemented portfolio management tools to enable ongoing portfolio management.
Realising Vision for Portfolio delivery
Evaluated a large number of government agencies within a department and determined criteria to align work packages to key outcomes. Developed a support model for prioritising work packages to achieve the desired vision.
IT Investment Planning
Developed a decision support tool for a UK Retail Bank to manage its portfolio of projects. By incorporating variable project timelines and interdependences, the client was able to manage costs and understand the risks to time and budget.
