“Portfolio prioritization drives the wrong behaviors…”
There are times in portfolio management where things are simply very right or very wrong. I was in a large meeting to discuss the difficulties that the IT team are having with managing and sequencing the workload that the portfolio needed . Although this particular organisation had some great portfolio processes, governance and reporting structures in place it didn’t prioritize it’s 50 or so projects.
I’ve seen this a number of times and one of the early indicators that regular corporate portfolio prioritization is needed is the pain that IT are feeling with allocating resources. So I raised the concept of portfolio prioritization as a key way to help, to which a senior change management bod replied “The Board don’t want to prioritize because it drives the wrong behaviors”.
I was pretty surprised with this view as I’ve never heard someone in this position be so eloquently and completely and utterly wrong on this subject. (note you can always tell when I’m suprised because I say “okay” slowly and my eyebrows raise up to my hairline, which as you can tell from the Mr Portfolio Management portrait, is pretty high). Anyway, I was ready to unleash my portfolio prioritization furry (sorry I mean highlight the benefits and ‘what’s in it for me’ of prioritizing) but it wasn’t the time or place unfortunately.
But it did get me thinking, I wondered if this person preferred the behaviors that failing to prioritize drives, which in my experience includes :
1) Everyone thinks their project should be resourced first so people go tribal (prevents the ‘one team’ approach and promotes silo delivery)
2) The big projects get resourced first simply because they are ‘big’ (increases delivery risk because often it’s the ‘little’ ones that can trip up an entire portfolio delivery)
3) Directors and their teams have to shout increasingly loud because this is seen as the way to prove your project is important (detracts from an energized change culture)
4) Portfolio delivery is rigid and cannot adapt quickly (risk that the portfolio delivery becomes detached from the strategy, especially in environments where customer needs and policy change frequently)
5) People are generally frustrated because no-one is prioritizing (increases risk of people leaving so you lose key skills and experience)
6) When budgets are cut, you chop a little off a lot or you kill the wrong project (increases individual project delivery risk because you cant reduce a budget and expect the same thing, secondly increases the risk that you’re killing a project that was contributing lots to the strategy)
For the record, prioritising your portfolio of projects is very right. Without exception, failing to prioritize your portfolio is very very very very wrong. End of.
@MrPortfolio
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This reminds me of a similar comment I got from a manager that deals with IT related projects. He said, “if you want to stifle creativity and progress then institute a prioritization process”. You can find comments to a discussion I started on the PPM Project Portfolio Management LinkedIn group, titled “Does prioritization stifle creativity?”
Question back to you though: if the above six conditions don’t really apply, how useful is prioritization? That is, if the organization has the budget to bring in contractors when project needs increase, and approaches projects on a FIFO basis, what is the value-add for prioritization? I am asking from a VP point of view, because this comment was given to me when I talked about the need to prioritize projects.
Thanks,
Tim
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Hi Tim, really sorry for the delay on this. I’m not sure what FIFO means but, lets say the organisation has loads of cash to throw at projects, which is rare but exists (particularly in the middle east). However, a couple of thoughts for you because its still worth prioritising in my opinion
1) an organisation should have a strategy, so as a minimum one would hope that the strategic contribution analysis would indicate which ones contribute most. So you would then highlight which ones provide the biggest bang or take you the furthest forward.
2) Resource bottlenecks, maybe an organisation can keep throwing project managers at the portfolio, but at some point there will probably be resourcing issues elsewhere, maybe within the business areas or specialist skills such as IT etc. So, you’d prioritise based on resource skills availability, or timescales.
Generally though, if a VP is not interested in delivering value for money, delivering to time pressure or resource availability then what are they actually doing??? This is of course based on my assumption that you mean Vice President not Virtually Pointless? :o)
all the best
@MrPortfolio