Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (Enterprise PPM or EPPM) practices and tools are designed to help organizations prioritize, plan, execute, and monitor their projects and portfolios of projects to maximize value.
In today’s troubled business climate, deploying an effective Enterprise PPM strategy has become more important than ever. Let’s explore the current project management challenges and consider best practices to help PMOs and project leaders meet them.
Standardizing Enterprise PPM processes
With the so-called “Great Resignation,” increased turnover is forcing businesses to integrate and onboard new talent. Because of this, it is more critical than ever to make sure that everyone across the organization speaks the same language and uses the same tools, methods, and processes to manage and deliver projects.
Implementing a standardized methodology and toolset will help organizations streamline their enterprise PPM and ensure consistent project delivery. This will in turn minimize project risks and increase the chances of success.
Monitoring performance
Organizations should establish and track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to monitor project execution and make sure that everything is on track and progresses according to plan. Ensuring performance is even more important in the current context of resource scarcity and economic uncertainty.
PMOs should make sure they have the right metrics and tools in place, including for budget management.
Encouraging collaboration
With the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations have adopted remote work as the new normal. But managing remote employees requires new collaboration tools and strategies to keep teams aligned and engaged throughout the project lifecycle. In other words, while fostering collaboration is a matter of culture and management style, it also requires empowering tools.
Prioritizing projects and initiatives
It has always been essential for PMOs to assess the potential ROI of projects to prioritize based on potential value. This is key to optimizing resource allocation and maximizing business performance. In today’s complex and changing environment, project assessment and prioritization should place extra focus on risk evaluation and mitigation. The ability to run “what-if” scenarios can be of great help to prevent delays, overruns, or even failures.
Aligning Enterprise PPM with business strategy
Calculating the potential ROI of projects is well and good, but such quantitative metrics won’t necessarily reflect the actual impact of the project on the organization. A program with a comparatively lower ROI but greater alignment with one or several of the organization’s strategic priorities may create more overall value for the firm. Hence the importance of having capabilities to combine PPM with strategic planning.
Meeting the PMO’s challenges in 2024 and embracing the enterprise PPM best practices outlined above requires solid data consolidation and analysis capabilities. Leveraging technology innovation can help project leaders to gain the real-time visibility and insights they need to optimize their Enterprise PPM.
