Table of contents
Part 1: How to protect your investments, keep your existing tools, and gain visibility?
Years of latent markets dampened the profits and increased the competition. These conditions made businesses aware that chasing your goals “as it goes” doesn’t cut it anymore. While exploring PPM, small and middle-size companies found “Visibility” to be one unique and elusive beast. On the one hand, it has always lived here in the project portfolio management universe. On the other hand, recognition of its importance and efforts to “capture it” are still in their infancy. When PPM stopped being a luxury for the “giants of industry”, visibility became a cornerstone.
Visibility allows us to keep track of all projects at hand. It guarantees that no projects are hidden. It ensures that all projects are reported and tracked and accounted for. It also allows everyone to know the organization’s plans and what they must do to make these plans work. Visibility also allows management to make a decision faster and decide on new initiatives.
What do visibility and inner transparency bring to your business?
- Swift evaluation of the current situation
- Understanding of progress and issues at hand
- Ability to speed up the decision-making process
- Ability to communicate every concern with precision and without obstacles and extra steps
It became evident that even the smallest business entity won’t succeed without a solid plan and tracking of the progress. Since then, business owners and visibility became not a benefit, but a necessity. And software manufacturers provide many solutions “to get things done.” Yet, not every solution is designed as a full-grown PPM toolkit.
PPM tools adoption is still a more spontaneous step to satisfy immediate needs, not a strategic measure. Now we come close to the first issue of visibility with modern PPM. The business adopts a tool that provides separate, useful insights into the day-to-day processes. Or several tools to check the effectiveness of operations. But none of those provide complete visibility.
The “money angle”
The cost of buying new tools is not the issue itself. The issue lies in the idea of purchasing solutions, adopting apps, [migrating data], training teams, and not getting what you need. The very idea of replacing one solution with another or compiling tools that don’t match is not a winning one. First of all, it memorial spending both in finance and time consumption. It comes down to:
“I need to justify why I spend more money when we have already spent on previous tools.”
Or
“I have already implemented everything and spent money, but I still do not have a full picture.”
This is the same thing but from different angles. Any executive wouldn’t be concerned with the idea of spending more on the idea that one day it all will click and become perfect.
Integration to the rescue!
Integration is a clear and wholesome solution to this dilemma. Thus, modern PPM tools can “talk” to one another via integration capabilities. Know this – adopting a tool that can’t “communicate” with your other toys isn’t worth your budget. With modern PPM solutions, you don’t have to replace anything. All your previous apps become “strategic investments,” not useless buys. When adopting a new, fresh solution, you can integrate and collect all the data in one concise data stream. PPM Express is an excellent example of a toolbox, where your data is easy to reach, share, and collaborate on. It allows the intertwining of the data from multiple work and task management systems. So that you can use the tools your team has grown to like and create a concise “bigger picture” to provide many options for proper governance. In other words, PPM Express:
- RE-USE VS REPLACES. Save existing investments into tools. Organizations can deploy best-of-the-breed tools that deliver the best results without any compromises.
- COMMON FEATURES. Define a common project & portfolio management framework for the organization.
- INTERCONNECTIVITY. Connect and aggregate data from existing tools across departments using a single platform for monitoring and management
- ANALYTICS. Use powerful BI for data analysis, monitoring, and decision-making.
Part 2: Gain portfolio visibility while keeping your staff happy
The project professionals began to feel the pressure to do even more than planned before. They were expected to help make the organization more successful by aligning it with its strategy. Firms demand more productivity from their workforce. They familiarize themselves with portfolio management. They adopt new tools and struggle for internal transparency. But “visibility” seems to evade the efforts of project management professionals.
Why is it important for everyone to gain internal visibility on all projects and portfolios?
- Visibility allows the management team to be aware of the progress daily, thus synchronizing efforts and moving in the same direction.
- The decision-making process speeds up, allowing to cut the “waiting for approval” periods to a minimum.
- Transparency goes a long way, “busy vs. productive.” When your PM, PMO, and execs know what workload you’re under, they can prioritize and rearrange the schedules. So that team members can breathe easy and be productive, not just busy.
Visibility: How to gain and use it wisely
The challenge of making changes in organizations by deploying new tools consists of two main concerns. First is about the money – buying new tools, spending time and funds adopting new technologies. The second one is about the willingness to change and gain new skills. Have you met the “I hate change” approach yet? There are scenarios when everyone but the financial department uses Microsoft Project Server. The finance department uses Primavera. And it is utterly impossible to make a complete transition to one tool across the enterprise.
Both concerns are solved by choosing and adopting an appropriate solution. One that is scalable, customizable, and able to integrate with other, previously adopted tools the team has found useful. Modern PPM solutions are mostly equipped with an integration option. So that you can incorporate the data from many datasets into the final report. A great example of such a modern tool is PPM Express.
Well, at the end of the day, it’s more of a toolbox than a single tool. You can track and manage every project you’ve got on your plate. You can group them into portfolios, and incorporate planning, strategies, and forecast. You can see all the data in one dashboard, and the list of features and capabilities grows far beyond the definition of a “tool”.
This modern workspace solution is built for organization decision-makers and management. But it benefits significantly for all the team members on every level. Aggregation of the data from many sources, and the ability to access all project-related information in one place, is useful for everyone in the organization. Teams manage projects how they want and where they want, while the executives get results and can check the progress in a single location. The unified interface provides visibility to define goals, budgets, plans, and strategies. The system provides unique connectivity to all projects while giving a chance to communicate, prioritize, analyze, and report progress.