August 4, 2024 • 54 mins
Ever wondered how to seamlessly align client needs with the offerings of tech providers? Join us on this episode of Agile Ideas as we uncover the secrets of effective Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions. Recorded live on May 23rd as a Meetup, we delve into bridging the gap between business requirements and technological capabilities through the vital role of a client advocate.
Discover essential PPM tool features, key solution areas, and top tips to confidently navigate the PPM landscape. We provide practical steps for implementing PPM tools within your organisation, discussing governance structures, user access, and management responsibilities. Learn how PPM tools can enhance portfolio prioritization, optimize resource allocation, align projects with strategic goals, reduce risks, and track performance metrics.
Our episode also features real-world case studies, showcasing organisations that have successfully adopted PPM tools. Gain insights from their experiences to avoid common pitfalls and embrace best practices. Whether you're researching or ready to implement, this episode offers valuable advice on conducting needs assessments, understanding product roadmaps, evaluating features, and involving stakeholders in your selection journey.
Tune in to empower yourself with the knowledge needed to select and implement the right PPM solution for your organisation.
In this episode we cover:
- Navigating Project Portfolio Management Solutions
- Implementing PPM Tools
- Critical Factors in PPM Implementation
- Selecting and Implementing PPM Solutions
- Evaluating and Selecting PPM Solutions
- Case Studies in PPM Implementation
and more
This podcast is sponsored by Agile Management Office (www.agilemanagementoffice.com) providing high-impact delivery execution in an agile era for scaling businesses.
Join future Meetups here - https://www.meetup.com/en-AU/agile-ideas/
Watch the video of this event on YouTube.
Thank you for listening to this podcast. We welcome any feedback. www.agilemanagementoffice.com/contact
Make sure
Thank you for listening to Agile Ideas! If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with someone who might benefit from our discussions. Remember to rate us on your preferred podcast platform and follow us on social media for updates and more insightful content.
Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd really appreciate it if you could share it with your friends and rate us. Let's spread the #AgileIdeas together!
We'd like to hear any feedback. www.agilemanagementoffice.com/contact
Don't miss out on exclusive access to special events, checklists, and blogs that are not available everywhere. Subscribe to our newsletter now at www.agilemanagementoffice.com/subscribe.
You can also find us on most social media channels by searching 'Agile Ideas'.
Follow me, your host, on LinkedIn - go to Fatimah Abbouchi - www.linkedin.com/in/fatimahabbouchi/
For all things Agile Ideas and to stay connected, visit our website below. It's your one-stop destination for all our episodes, blogs, and more. We hope you found today's episode enlightening. Until next time, keep innovating and exploring new Agile Ideas!
Learn more about podcast host Fatimah Abbouchi
..
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted
by Fatima Rabuchi.
For anyone listening out therenot having a good day, please
know there is help out there.
Today's going to be really adeep dive, informative session
on all things project portfoliomanagement, and the reason we
decided to do this type ofmeetup today specifically was
(00:22):
because we're getting a lot ofdifferent questions from a lot
of different clients who areoften already really clear on
what they need in terms of a PPMsolution, but what they don't
understand is how to align whatthe tech providers are actually
putting out there.
A lot of the times, the PPMproviders are really just, you
know, really good at technologyand they don't really understand
(00:43):
the business side.
So effectively being that kindof conduit between the two is
really the reason why we decidedto do this meetup today.
We're going to cover off thekey question of what's a client
advocate?
Just to make that really clearUnderstanding PPM tools and key
capabilities.
What we won't do today and it'sreally important to call this
(01:03):
out is we're not going to tellyou which PPM is the best or not
the best.
There is dozens and dozens ofthem on the market and they all
do different things.
Some of them have amazing AIbuilt in, others are really
old-fashioned, some are based onagile, others are based on
traditional project.
There's so many variations.
So what we will do is we'llhelp you understand the tools in
(01:24):
general and the keycapabilities to be looking for
or to be deep diving into andwhat's actually out there in
terms of capabilities, based onour experience with clients.
But we won't go into specifictech, not in this meetup at the
moment.
We'll also go into PPM solutionfocus areas.
So what this is about is whatare the kind of key five
categories to think about whenidentifying a solution for your
(01:49):
business or your team, and thisalso may be relevant if you
already are in a company thatalready has a PPM.
One client recently reached outand found out that their PPM
solution in this governmentdepartment is being sunsetted,
so it's not going to besupported anymore in about 18
months, so they've got no choicebut to actually change their
PPM provider.
(02:09):
So they're setting up a bit ofa project to go through that as
well.
We'll also go through some ofthe key challenges that we've
experienced to make you awarehow to navigate the selection
process, some top tips, and thenalso take you through a little
bit of an industry insight, casestudy and some Q&A.
So please ask questions at anytime throughout the presentation
in the chat, and we will coverthem off, and we really want to
(02:31):
make sure that you get the mostout of today.
So, on that note, let's start byasking the question of why you
actually are here now.
So thinking about the reasonthat you might be here is
probably going to be one ofthese reasons.
So I'm kind of keen to see I'mjust going to quickly ask in a
(02:53):
poll where are you right now?
Are you looking at a new PPMsolution?
Do you have one in place andyou're looking to upgrade or
being forced to upgrade?
Are you researching thebenefits of a PPM and so you're
looking to upgrade or beingforced to upgrade?
Are you researching thebenefits of a PPM and so you're
unsure about whether or not youhave the right requirements
defined?
Have you picked a PPM solutionand now you just need to
(03:15):
implement?
So you're looking for, like, animplementation path,
implementation strategy.
Or perhaps you're one of thosepeople that have heard a lot
about PPMs but actually don'treally know where you are at the
moment?
You just want to cover off alot of questions that you might
have.
So I'll just give that 30 moreseconds.
Yeah, really keen, so we cantailor the conversation today
around where you are.
(03:35):
Okay, so a lot of people so fartalking about being unsure and
having a lot of questions, somejust doing some research.
Okay, awesome, that's a goodstart.
Thank you for that.
Okay, so first, what is a clientadvocate?
So just to reiterate, as I saidat the beginning, technology
(03:58):
vendors demonstrate capabilityagainst requirements you often
will provide them and they willrespond to requests for
information and requests forproposals.
These usually implementationsare really expensive.
I've never seen a PPMimplementation or even the base
cost for a PPM solution beinganything less than $50,000 as a
starting point and then theprices go up from there, from
(04:19):
implementation, and that's justbased on lots of different
examples as experience.
So your client, as a client, youand your team will understand
what you need.
You'll often develop somethingcalled functional and technical
requirements.
So we want it to do reportinglike this, or we want it to
track financials and link to ourfinance system, or we want it
to be able to be split acrossdifferent regions or teams all
(04:42):
those sorts of questions andcomments and things that you
will identify.
You'll often give that to thetechnology vendor or in some
instances, if your company isnot very mature, the technology
vendor will actually providethat to you and then you've got
to kind of align to them.
So a client advocateeffectively sits in the middle
and helps to coordinate and gothrough that process with you.
So before you go down the pathof PPM, lucy is just going to
(05:05):
quickly take us through whetheror not you're ready.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Thank you.
So yeah, look when we're workingwith our clients and we're
having those initialconversations around do you need
a PPM?
Are you actually ready for aPPM?
There's a few questions that weask, and these are three that
we thought um were worthy ofjust sharing with you guys today
(05:31):
.
So, firstly, are your processessufficiently mature?
Um, so let me use an examplelike, for instance, if you're
investing in a ppm tool, let'ssay, you've got a bit of budget,
you're, you're um, I've got togo ahead to get like a great
tool.
Maybe this tool's got anamazing risk and issue module.
(05:56):
So you're kind of likebrilliant, you sat in um your
pmo function, thinking this isgoing to be amazing.
However, if your organizationthen doesn't have, for instance,
like a great risk and issueframework, a really good
understanding around measurement, as PPM practitioners we can
only go so far.
(06:17):
So the tool will certainly giveus that capability for
uplifting, like the oversight onrisk and issues et cetera, but
it's not a fix all, it's notgoing to create you a framework,
it's not going to uplift yourculture around risk and issue
management.
So we always make sure that ourPMO practitioners kind of
(06:39):
understand what they caninfluence and what they can't in
terms of, like, theimplementation and expectation
of what the PPM tool canactually do.
Secondly, just like any projectthat your organization might run
, is this project actuallysupported?
So PPM tool, like the selectionprocess, the implementation,
(07:03):
it's like any other technicalimplementation.
So we check is theresponsorship?
Is this project actuallyprioritized and strategically
aligned within your organization?
Those things, just like anyprojects, must exist for a PPM
tool.
Implementation, implementationalso.
And thirdly, another really umgood thing to understand is have
(07:28):
we got really clear outcomes inmind and are those outcomes
realistic?
So, in terms of um, the ppmlike, if we're looking um, just
an example here, and there'smany examples that we uncover
with our clients but, forinstance, if you're wanting to
(07:49):
improve your resource management, there's some things that the
PPM tool can help with.
So certainly it can help withbooking resources and forward
planning and having thatoversight and understanding
where those conflicts are.
It can really bring that tolife.
Can it help with resourceretention?
Look, to some extent.
(08:11):
However, there's probably lotsof other things going on within
the organization that may needto be activated at the same time
.
So we really encourage ourclients to kind of think about
the ultimate objective, how farthe PPM tool can take you and
what's the gap and what's beingdone about that so that a really
(08:32):
holistic view can be built anda proper kind of strategic plan
to get you to the end stage.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Thank you, lucy.
If anyone has any questionsabout that, feel free to put it
into the chat.
Thank you, lucy.
If anyone has any questionsabout that, feel free to put it
into the chat.
So I'm just going to take youthrough the five key PPM
solution focus areas before wedeep dive into a little bit more
of the key capabilities andsome of the challenges.
So when we think about the PPMsolution, regardless of where
you are starting and regardlessof whether you have an existing
(09:02):
PPM capability in-house oryou're starting from scratch, or
perhaps you're working in anorganization and you can see
that they are doing thingsreally manually and it's very
broken up across different silosacross the organization,
perhaps you're trying to thinkabout ways to bring together and
centralize views aroundprojects within the organization
.
Either way, there is five keyareas that, beneath the surface,
(09:26):
are the focus areas.
So when we're doing someplanning and you're thinking
about what it is that you need,I highly recommend that you take
these five focus areas and look.
Sometimes you might run them asindividual workshops, sometimes
you might run them as a littlebit of a deep dive internally
and then with a vendor, etcetera, et cetera.
So the first one, obviouslystrategically as you just
(09:50):
touched on that aroundinvestment management and
portfolio management.
Now you're bringing in a PPMsolution, which means you need
to have some form of portfoliooversight that exists today to
understand what projects aregoing to go into the solution to
begin with.
So, thinking about how thatstrategically will integrate,
and this includes howinformation in the system will
be entered and how thatinformation then gets reported
as well, which then links intoprocess.
(10:12):
So if you think about one ofthe most common parts of a PPM
solution outside of pipelineidentification, project
identification it's usuallyfinance related finance and
resourcing.
So with the finance andresourcing piece, in order to
activate and use that part ofthe PPM solution, you need to
think about how that solution isgoing to integrate with your
(10:34):
existing processes.
A very common example is theorganization's month-end
financial process.
Now if you don't have a PPMsolution in place and you
understand your month end cycleworking with finance and whatnot
for projects and then youimplement a PPM solution, you
need to make sure that theprocesses for month end because
your corporate finance team arenot going to change the
(10:56):
processes to suit the technologyhave to be aligned.
So the technology now needs toadapt to the cycles and the
processes that relate to finance, and that's just one small
example.
The third part of it is toolsand technology.
So one of the things that a lotof clients tend to not do is
they don't actually take a stocktake of what tools and
(11:16):
technologies they have in placebefore they go and bring in a
PPM.
There's two challenges here.
First of all, almost all PPMsolutions now are cloud-based,
and they have a number ofdifferent security requirements
that underpin these solutions,some better than others.
There's a lot of differentrequirements depending on what
region or country you might bein.
(11:37):
In banking, for example,there's some very, very heavy
regulations, and so any datagoing into a PPM solution
resource data, customer data,finance data, et cetera has to
be really well thought through,and so, with tools and
technologies, you might need tothink about how your PPM that
you bring into your organization, or the one that you upgrade to
(11:58):
, may link in with things likeyour active directory, which is,
you know, all the employees inthe business, so that you can
have like a single sign-onexperience.
There's other considerations aswell, and the other
consideration is, if I'mbringing in a new PPM, I would
want to be taking the time andthe initiative to look at what
existing tools and tech am Ireplacing.
(12:20):
So, for example, a company thatwe worked with recently.
They had strict strategysoftware, they had a different
software for tracking timelinesfor projects, they had a
different software for financeand resource tracking and a
number of others as well, andthey were all separately managed
.
So bringing in a PPM solutionthat addressed their
requirements meant that we wereable to actually reduce not only
(12:43):
the use of those tools but, insome instances, completely
remove them.
So you save cost, you save time.
But if you don't take the timeto plan that as part of your
pre-work for your implementation, you may actually end up with a
lot more rework and a lot moreduplication.
And then this brings me toinformation flows.
So this information flow is keybecause, as I mentioned before,
(13:04):
you've got to put the data inin order to get data out, and
rubbish in means rubbish out.
You don't want to bring in aPPM tool, and I've seen this
happen.
So in a local council recently,they were planning and deciding
how they're going to bring itin at a PMO level.
So they were thinking about itfrom wearing my PMO governance
hat.
This is the tool, this is howit's going to work and this is
what I want the PMs to do.
(13:25):
What ended up happening isnobody used it, so none of the
project managers actually usedthe tool, because it wasn't
implemented correctly.
They didn't define theinformation flows accurately at
the beginning, and then the PMsactually felt themselves having
to duplicate data in manualreporting and the PPM platform,
(13:46):
having to duplicate data inmanual reporting and the PPM
platform.
So what they did as aworkaround is the PMO team and
the analysts in the PMO manuallywould take the reports the PMs
would do and actually go andenter into the system themselves
.
It is just such a waste of timeand it was because they didn't
integrate the requirements ofpeople that are going to use it,
which is predominantly yourproject team, and then, finally,
governance.
So when you bring in any newtechnology, first of all you
(14:08):
have to have the fundamentalwho's going to be the users and
what user access matrix am Igoing to have around it?
Who is going to manage the tool?
Is it going to sit in IT?
Now, naturally, there's anassumption that it always sits
in IT, but sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it's brought in byfinance, and sometimes it's
brought in by finance with noactual conversation with IT.
(14:30):
So there's a lot of thinkingaround what's the governance
associated with the tool?
How's it going to be managed?
How's the data going to bemaintained?
Is it going to be PMO led or isit going to be led by the CFO's
office?
Is it going to be led by aportfolio manager in IT, and so
forth and so forth.
So setting up and definingthose governance structures
early before you startimplementing a tool will really
(14:50):
go a long way in helping you tomake sure you're successful.
Is there any questions at thispoint on that?
Keeping an eye on the chat, ifthere is, feel free to put them
in.
I'm going to move over tounderstanding PPM tools and key
capabilities and I'll hand backto lucy for this right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Thank you um all right.
So just in case there's any umanyone's unsure about what ppm
is, we've just included a nicelittle definition there.
So, um, I'll let you read that.
As a PMO practitioner, I kindof very simply think of the PPM
(15:28):
tool as being my portal into theproject world and I think that
that's quite a good kind of youknow visual to keep in mind.
So when we look at the keycapabilities of a ppm, we're
looking at actuallyunderstanding all of the um, the
project activity that's goingon within the organization, and
(15:52):
this is a place that you go tolook at that.
So anything that um is actuallylike transforming or changing
within your organization interms of a discipline, it should
be listed in here, it should beprioritized and there should be
like proper decision making andselection criteria around
anything that's getting greenlighted to go ahead.
Also, if I want to look at myresources and any kind of hot
(16:17):
spots from a portfolioperspective, this is where I
would be able to go and look atthat.
And perhaps I'm wanting to workwith operational managers to
look at particular stress pointsin terms of workload and change
management.
Again, this is where your PPMtool would really help evidence
those kind of conversations, allof my reporting all
(16:40):
standardized, all in here,everybody using the same
measurement systems.
So then we've got really goodkind of like heat maps of where
the risk exposure is within theorganization and rage management
.
Obviously everything, um allstandardized.
So our risks, our assumptions,our issues, our dependencies,
(17:01):
proper, um, you know, kind ofstructure and approaches and
mitigation strategies and,ideally, workflow around this to
keep everything moving andbeing resolved.
Financial management we'rekeeping all of our finances in
here.
We've usually got anintegration with our finance
(17:22):
system that helps keep themanual effort down.
And, yeah, aspects of ourproject management lifecycle
ideally would be representedwithin the tool.
So if you think kind of likestage gating and investment
milestones, all of thatadministration and effort should
(17:43):
be present within your PPM tool.
That's really helpful forprepping for audits and making
sure that there's due processaround any cash release.
So what drives the need for aPPM?
Lots of things, typicallywithin the clients that we've
worked with.
This is probably our kind ofhit list and the reasons, the
(18:07):
drivers that we see the most.
So, firstly, the need toimprove portfolio prioritization
and selection.
So this is around like actuallyhaving evidence to make proper
strategic decisions, ofstrategic decisions and also
(18:28):
really simply getting anunderstanding of the projects
that are going on within theorganization.
It's amazing how many times wego into organizations and we're
able to go right back to basicsaround, like what even is a
project?
What should we be tracking inhere?
What should we have anoversight of?
What's business as usual?
That kind of really basicdiscussion is often really
(18:51):
foundational for PPMimplementation.
The need to optimize resources Idon't think we've been into an
organization where this isn'trelevant.
We often come across kind ofsingle person points of failure.
There's often people withinorganizations that are called to
be an SME on literally everysingle project and so, again,
(19:15):
your PPM tools are a really goodway of kind of like flushing
that out and understanding whereperhaps there are capability
gaps within the organization.
Strategic alignment Again, thisis like what projects are
happening and do they actuallyalign with strategic outcomes.
So if an organization isspending money, you want to make
(19:37):
sure that you're spending it onthe right things.
Reducing risk I think that one'spretty obvious.
Reducing risk I think thatone's pretty obvious.
And then also driving andtracking performance, and again,
a lot of tools are becomingquite preemptive in terms of
(19:58):
forecasting future trends,particularly around risks and
issues.
So, yeah, this performancetracking and forward view can
really help with your riskmitigation strategies.
Any questions around that?
Or anybody got any kind ofalternative drivers within their
organization that are pushingthem down, you know, trying to
(20:23):
understand whether a PPM tool isappropriate for their
organization?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Or any surprises.
Feel free to put it in the chatas well.
Um, we'll keep that going okay,thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, no problem.
So, um, we've we've just kindof drawn out here um.
So you can imagine when you'reimplementing ppm, there's,
there's almost like there's a.
There's a lot of phases in theprocess, but we thought that
we're going to talk about theprocess that we go through
shortly, but we thought it mightbe useful, just just whilst we
(21:01):
um prepare for that discussion,just to talk about some of the
challenges in the actualselection process and then some
of the challenges in theimplementation process, because
they're quite different.
So, look, we've got 10 um thatwe've come up with here.
So perhaps, if I just share umsome of the ones that I think um
(21:25):
could be really relevant tothis group here.
So, firstly, um vendorevaluation.
So what I think is reallyimportant in the, the kind of
like pre-selection stage, is doyou understand, um, what the
requirements are?
So what are your like absolutenon-negotiables and then what
(21:48):
are your nice to haves and whatdo you think you might need in
the future?
So that kind of like reallygood, solid understanding of
your requirements is soimportant, because it's that
that you should be evaluatingagainst.
And the reason that I thinkthat that is really important is
when vendors come in and dodemonstrations.
(22:09):
It's very easy to get taken inwith a really great demo, lots
of great materials, it's allvery exciting, but it's really
really fundamentally importantthat you hold on to what is it
that you actually need as anorganization and where are you
going.
So we've seen quite a fewclients get embroiled in that
(22:34):
kind of demonstration phase andget a little bit kind of um, you
know, bought into the demos andimpressed by those and then
kind of lose themselves withinthat process.
So I guess that that's where uma lot of the work that we do
comes into supporting ppmselection that we've seen that
(22:56):
there's so many times and somany vendor demonstrations that
it's really good to um to keepyour your head about you when
you're um, when you're in thatprocess.
So the other thing that we umthink is really important in the
ppm kind of pre-selection isthe integration points that you
need in your organization, and Ithink the one that I would
(23:18):
really call out is the financesystem.
So usually a key integrationpoint for any PPM, if you want
to avoid any kind of like manualload on your project managers,
is an integration with yourfinance system.
It's a really good projectcontrol and it kind of forces
some good governance aroundforecasting and reporting on
(23:45):
your actuals, et cetera.
But again, it's reallyparamount to make sure that,
whatever your finance system is,that when you're looking at
your PPM selection, that theappropriate technical people are
in the room to make sure thatyou can assess that capability
and not get caught out postselection.
Um.
And then the other thing isaround.
(24:08):
The other one that I think Icall out is the strategic
objectives and reallymaintaining that long-term focus
, that trying to do that balancebetween what do we need to do
right now, what are the gapsthat we've got that we're really
kind of like desperate to get asolution for, and just making
sure that that's balancedagainst the long-term strategic
(24:29):
objectives of the organization.
Yeah, so they're the kind oflike key ones that I think are
worthy to be called out in thepre-selection phase.
All right, so then we come tothe actual implementation.
(24:53):
This is an area that's probablya lot more um familiar to
people, particularly if you'reinvolved in technical
implementations.
And the ppm implementation is,at its essence, a technical
implementation.
Yes, there's lots of downstreamimpacts, yes, there's lots of
change, integration, but it's aproject like um, you know, just
(25:14):
like any other project that theorganization would run.
So again, we've called out whatwe have experienced going wrong
and hopefully for any of yougoing down this pathway this
might help, just to keep frontof mind.
So three call outs from me.
One, something that we see alot and I think it's not just
(25:38):
applicable to ppm implementation, it's probably applicable to
lots of technologyimplementations and it's an
adequate change managementstrategy.
So the problem is, if you don'treally understand the change um
roadmap and really adequatelyinvolve your users, then of
(26:00):
course this is going to lead toum lower adoption or poor
utilization.
So people not fullyunderstanding um what can
actually be done within the ppm,so not getting those um.
The impact would be then notgetting those organizational
benefits that you're hoping forand also just like a lack of
(26:22):
training and involvement inthose kind of like sun pit
environments as you're goingthrough the implementation.
It just is not good for yourusers.
So what you don't want to endup with is like three or four
people that really know whatthey're doing and then the rest
of the organization's been leftbehind.
Again, this is not specific tojust PPM implementations.
(26:43):
But look, change is oftenoverlooked and I think in terms
of when you're implementing asystem that has got lots of
downstream impacts and you wantlots of energy and enthusiasm
behind to get the benefit behind, and then, of course, you
really want to make sure thatyour change management strategy
(27:03):
is solid.
The other really big one that wesee is over-reliance on a
vendor.
So what this means is that theclient hasn't set up adequate
self-sufficiency in terms oftechnical know-how and
capability, and then what thatmeans is that the organization
(27:24):
is not independent enough todrive their own optimization and
maturity pathway, and that'sreally sad if that happens,
because it means that for theorganization it can get
expensive and it can getfrustrating, and then the
relationship with the vendor candegrade, and that's a really
(27:45):
suboptimal outcome and one thatyou'd want to avoid ideally.
And then the other one that Icall out from here is probably
the data migration and reallyunderestimating that.
So data migration, as we know,is always complex.
It's always a lot more timeconsuming than we would imagine,
(28:08):
but depending on the number ofsystems that you want to
integrate with so finance beinga significant one in my mind,
but also anything that isworkflow automated, you just
want to look at what that datamigration looks like and the
strategy around that.
And again, make sure thatyou've got the right people in
(28:31):
the room and sufficient kind ofresource and budget to make sure
that that's optimized andyou're not implementing a system
and then somebody gets lombardwith.
You know, a whole load ofcatch-up around data migration
and a whole heap of umreconciliation that can really
kind of like detract from dayone success.
(28:51):
Yeah, so they're the big callouts from our perspective.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
There's a comment one comment that's coming Michael
is just around some PPMs beingdesigned for waterfall projects
only, and it's so interestingbecause when we looked at all of
the PPM products in the market,there's many and some have been
around for many, many years.
One PPM solution, for example,that I found out about I think
(29:18):
about 10 years ago.
They were talking about theintegration of certain tech that
actually understood out about,about think about 10 years ago
they were talking about theintegration of um, uh, the
integration of certain tech thatactually understood and took
sentiment analysis of reportingthat pms were doing in there to
actually understand whether theywere progressing well or happy
with their projects and thingslike that.
So there's some some ppm toolsthat have now um evolved a lot
(29:38):
over the years, with a lot moresignificant uptake of Agile.
Agile's been around for 25 plusyears, but when we think about
sort of the real drive behindmore Agile ways of working, it
really has picked up in the lastfive to eight years.
And so what I'm seeing in thisspace is there are PPM solutions
that are already longstandingexisting on the market.
(30:00):
You'll see them in the Gartnerquadrants etc.
Et cetera that have gone togreat lengths to invest
significant amount of money tointegrate agile-based versions
that align to their existingplatforms.
There's others that haveactually gone down the path of
taking what they used to haveand making it more agile, so
it's just more flexible andadaptable to any type of project
(30:22):
, not based on any you know anymethods or any project
management methods or ways ofworking.
And then there's others thatare marketing themselves as
agile and waterfall and all ofthese other types but actually
don't like they don't cut itwhen it comes to actually
utilizing them.
And what people find in thesebusinesses who implement these
(30:44):
tools is they actually have tobring in all these other bits of
parts to support things thatare not in there, like missing
time sheeting process or thetimeline management in there.
So then they're using thingslike you know, smart sheet for
timeline management and justreally clunky.
So there's kind of threedifferent kind of avenues with
relation to that, in terms ofAmani, your question.
(31:06):
So in terms of experienceimplementing PPM for portfolio
portfolios, so this is verypossible and the larger the PPM,
the more advanced functionalityusually that they have.
There are a few.
Again, if you look at theGartner Quadrant, there's some
popular ones there, the placethat this is usually done is
typically in your larger sort oftier one businesses.
In banking, for example, theydefinitely have implemented
(31:30):
different ways of working inparticular one bank as an
example across the differentdivisional portfolios, because
they all run differently and insome of the banks now a lot of
them have gone to the agile waysof working.
So even more so they've changedthe way that they run across
the different portfolios, so youcan actually customize some of
these tools to suit.
But, as we talked about before,it's really understanding and
(31:53):
making sure you have the definedways of working processes, all
of that understood first,because what you don't want is
one recent example of anautomotive company who had a ppm
implementation.
It was one person who broughtit in, they set it up the way
that they liked and the companynow spends about two hundred
thousand dollars a year onlicenses and only one person
(32:14):
uses the tool.
So that's the level that of ofyou know um ineffectiveness when
you just drive it on oneperson's opinion.
Yeah, that's a good point,fatima.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I think the other thing that's probably worthy of
us thinking about is the wholekind of premise of the PPM is to
bring standardisation to theorganisation, and so the way
that we often structure theseconversations is there's always
elements of governance andcontrol that are applicable to
every single project, regardlessof the delivery methodology
(32:56):
that's used to deliver theoutcomes of that particular
project.
So what we find is the PPM toolis used to provide that
standardization in terms of wayof working, investment slate,
funding, the approach to riskand issue management and
financials, etc.
(33:17):
I think in practical terms,what we do see is that often the
planning components are doneseparately and not within the
PPM tool.
So the PPM tool literally justtracks some key milestones, and
I think that that's a way ofkind of responding to the
(33:39):
delivery methods that areappropriate for different
projects.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's a really good call and it takes us to our next
point, so navigating selection.
So I want to preface this bysaying you are probably maybe
some of you are not the decisionmakers and maybe don't have the
opportunity to influence whichtool, or to start a project and
actually bringing in a tool orupgrading a tool.
I am keen, though, if you couldjust put in the chat if you
(34:08):
believe that you are actually adecision maker or significantly
can influence the selectionprocess.
Just a yes if you are one ofthose, and for those that aren't
which is fine as well I'llshare some tips in how you can
try to influence when you maynot be in the position of, you
know, authority to drive this.
So yes if you are, and ifyou're not, no, it doesn't
(34:31):
matter where you sit, becauseultimately, this process can
actually be beneficial to bothsides.
So yeah, just yes or no.
That would be amazing.
So, at the moment, when we thinkabout navigating the process,
this is literally thestep-by-step process that we
would typically take.
Now I will call out that itseems very simple and very
(34:52):
cyclical, and the steps takenand you know, just one after the
other, but there is a lot ofsub-steps that happen underneath
the surface of this.
So when we think about whereyou are or your organization is
whether it's today or whetherit's in an organization down the
line, or perhaps you're sort ofstarting a new role and you're
(35:13):
looking at it, or maybe you'vegot an existing PPM that you see
is just not effective.
So the first thing isunderstanding, obviously, the
purpose and the why.
We've talked about that quiteat length.
But one of the things that'sreally important is if you're in
a position where you're notintroducing a PPMU but you've
got one of those problems orchallenges that I just outlined
earlier around the PPM you haveis not working, or maybe it's
(35:35):
outdated or maybe it's beensunsetted, etc.
Then I think you need to beable to advocate the
conversation as to why thecurrent system or tool or
process is not working.
And I would recommend, ifyou're not in a position of
making the decision yourself butwant to sort of influence it, I
would look at picking, you know, two or three key features that
don't exist in the existingtool, or problems or challenges
(35:58):
that you have to then introducethose to you know, know your
one-up or your executive orwhoever it is that makes the
decision, to help themunderstand the reason why you
may need to make that change.
A lot of the time, when youintroduce a PPM solution, and if
you do it even partially rightby linking systems or bringing
in data from finance or HR etcetera, it becomes really hard
(36:23):
to change.
It takes time and money andeffort and, as Lucy said before,
it's a whole project in itself.
And this is really importantbecause there's some really
great marketing out there by PPMcompanies and some of them are
really more advanced than others, and there's some good ones and
there's some bad ones.
It's the same as any techplatform that exists out there.
It doesn't matter what industrywe're in.
(36:43):
So you need to be prepared fromthe client side to ask the
right questions, and so this iswhere the needs assessment
activity comes in.
So you need to think about whatit is that your current needs
in your organization are and thegoals, because your ppm should
scale with you, particularly ifit's a um.
It's a ppm that is, you know,been around for a really long
time.
(37:03):
It's not just something thatyou know came up yesterday.
There's a lot of new ones thatare based on agile I've just
popped up recently and um,they're sort of iterating them
as they go, but maybe they'renot going to be um scalable.
So you need to think about likeone of the questions we would
ask in the in the technology umdeep dive with the vendors is
what is on your product roadmap?
What actually have you gotcoming up down the line that's
(37:25):
going to benefit our business ormaybe impact our business as
well?
Researching the market, soevaluating features, looking at
different vendors, doing thepricing there are definitely
some really good research outthere.
I keep talking about Ghanabecause that's one of the most
popular.
A lot of companies tend to usethat data, but also do some of
your own data.
(37:45):
Look at existing tools that areactually in the market that are
not only based on feedback fromothers that you may know, but
look for ones that have workedwell and others that haven't,
and understand why.
So, as I said, one really big,popular tool that was used
recently in automotive failed todo what it was supposed to do,
not for lack of technologyimplementation, but for how it
(38:08):
was defined in the needsassessment and requirements that
were built by the clientthemselves.
So do your research, understandthe functionality that you need
and also look at whether or not.
You are looking for specificthings that are for your
industry.
A lot of PPM solutions areindustry agnostic, so you don't
have to look for one that'sspecific for banking or retail
(38:30):
or whatnot, but there aredefinitely some that have more
features than others.
When you are going through theprocess of actually selecting a
PPM solution and you'veidentified the market, you've
looked at your prospectivevendors, you've narrowed down
your list you should have aselection criteria that you
actually work towards.
This actually enables you to doscoring and the scoring process
(38:52):
should be really clear andagreed up front but also it
saves you from having anindividual who thinks that they
maybe know everything, like theautomotive example who actually
doesn't.
And then therefore, the decisionaround the technology solution
is skewed towards one person'sopinion.
So having some scoring willenable you to make a fair
(39:14):
assessment of the differentsuppliers that come to you and
provide you that solution.
Once you've gone through thatfirst four steps, you then
probably will have a narroweddown shortlist.
What you don't want to do ishave you know 40 vendors that
you've done a market scan of andthen realize you have to
interview 40 vendors and bringthem in to do demos, and that's
(39:35):
no one has time for that.
So what you want to do is, whenyou get to a shortlist, you
probably want a short list.
I would say maybe three to sixat most.
Um, most companies will go forthree because procurement forces
them to have three, but I don'tmind sometimes having a couple
of extras in there, because whatyou might think is the right
solution sometimes might not be.
(39:56):
And we went through thisprocess with with a company a
health and fitness company, um,not that long ago, and what we
realized is the two of the threejust absolutely did not tick
all the requirements when wedelve deeper into things like
their product roadmap and otherthings.
So by having those additionalthree suppliers, we were able to
then focus our shortlistevaluation on the four, and
(40:19):
that's where evaluating thevendors against the selection
criteria Now the selectioncriteria you have in that first
four steps will be a much, muchhigher level of detail when you
get to evaluating the vendorsafter you've shortlisted.
That's the next level down.
This is where you're reallygetting to a point where you're
ascertaining specifically foryour organization what it is
(40:41):
that you need and you'reactually asking vendors for
demonstrations against yourspecific requirements, whereas
in the selection criteria on theright side it's more of a broad
show us what you can do, canyou do this, can you do that?
And then we narrow down torecommendations.
So this is where you not onlyidentify and make a
recommendation, but you'll alsoidentify risks and issues.
(41:02):
Not any supplier out there isgoing to tick every box 100%.
They're just not.
And one thing you've got to becareful when making a
recommendation, or having arecommendation made to you, if
you're the decision maker isthat we factored in not only the
possible risks and issues withour existing tech and existing
solution we may have in place,or if we're bringing in
(41:22):
something new, but actuallythinking about the possibility
of how the implementation couldwork would work, et cetera.
So thinking aboutrecommendation being
comprehensive and theinformation sufficient enough
that it enables the decisionmaker to make an informed
decision that then will benefitthem and link to those
organisational requirements.
(41:43):
And that decision stage iswhere you then go into your
negotiation and you should havedefined your implementation plan
.
So there are the eight keysteps in the process.
Is there any questions at thispoint on that?
Okay, I'll keep moving, but ifthere's any questions, please
(42:05):
raise them.
So I'm going to take youthrough a couple of industry
insights and then a quick casestudy and then we'll wrap up
with some top tips and bestpractices.
So in terms of the industryinsights that we can share, so
you can see three examples therethere's automotive, banking and
finance and energy.
(42:25):
With the automotive example,I've sort of really probably
talked about that.
The only other thing I will addis the vendor evaluation process
was too narrow.
So what this particularsupplier did sorry client did is
they just went to a reallywell-known popular report and
they just picked one in the topcorner quadrant and said that's
what we're going with.
That not necessarily always theright decision, because it
(42:48):
means that they didn't do any ofthe pre-work, they just wanted
to hurry and get things so theycan automate their processes.
The problem is they didn'tactually have the processes
understood.
Now, I'm not suggesting youhave to have every process
defined, but you need tounderstand what it is you're
bringing the tech for,particularly because tech leads
to automation and also, as Isaid, the ongoing costs for this
(43:09):
company was in the hundreds ofthousands per year in licensing,
and the reason no one used itis there was absolutely no
change management to implementthe tool.
No change management.
It was non-existent.
Considering it's a largeautomotive business, you would
have thought that they wouldimplement that, but because it
was a one-person led band, itmeant that they failed on the
change management side.
(43:30):
In the banking example one ofthe banks that we've worked with
and not in the PPM space, butwere there when they were doing
it they developed the PPMsolution.
So in banking they typically dochange systems and that does
happen more frequently thanmaybe other companies.
But in this organization theydecided that they were gonna
update their PPM system and theywere gonna move to another
(43:54):
popular brand named One, andwhat they did there is they then
developed.
They had a group, a big project, lots of budget, and they
developed the system in completeisolation of anyone in project
management office governanceroles.
Now, considering there's a lotof elements of governance
associated with the use of thistool and it's the PMOs in this
bank that were driving projectmanagers to actually use the
(44:17):
tool, you would have thoughtthat they would have integrated
their opinions.
Now, what happened was whenthey went to roll out, they
actually ran a number of cohortsand they brought PMO and then
in the banks at the time therewas probably about anywhere from
100 to 200 PMO managers.
So they're brought in the PMOsinto several cohorts.
I was in one of those at thetime and when they were running
(44:39):
through the training, if I cantell you the amount of questions
that came up with gaps,opportunities and risks
associated with the PPM thatthey had completely customized,
it would absolutely shock you.
We were picking things out thatwere just problems, problems,
problems, and because theydidn't factor in the right
(44:59):
people in that process, it ledto to those challenges.
Um, they were very, veryheavily reliant on sort of your
traditional uh methods in termsof delivery and they effectively
had to throw away two milliondollars that they spent in
customizing the ppm solution.
They literally gutted thesystem and they started again.
(45:20):
Now in banking, you've probablygot the money, but still what a
waste of time.
And then finally, in the energyexample.
So in the energy example, thecompany lacked project
management, maturity and justfundamentals.
So they weren't really surewhere to start and they had gaps
in their processes.
So, effectively, all of theprocesses between HR and finance
(45:41):
and risk, et cetera, was allvery manual.
So what they needed to do isactually evolve their processes
to at least what we'd call alevel two, meaning repeatable
processes.
Before they started to automatethe processes.
They didn't go as far asimplementing a system before
fixing processes.
(46:01):
So that was a really good ideafor them.
But they started to introduceusers across the company to the
processes before they thenbrought in the system and
increased the adoption as aresult.
So the executives were highlyengaged.
They were, it was led from thetop and they were actually part
of the first few rounds oftraining.
(46:23):
And then also the processeswere understood.
First the integration betweendepartments was understood and
then they started the selectionprocess for PPM providers,
because that can take severalmonths in some instances.
So I'm hoping that some of thatresonates.
I'm keen to get your thoughtson any of that if you want to
throw any comments in the chat.
Otherwise, I'm going to takeyou into just a little bit of a
(46:43):
deep dive case study with healthand fitness.
Um, unless there's anyone,anyone who's got any questions
at this point, okay, perfect.
If there is, lucy will call itout, but I'm going to take you
through a quick case study.
So this company was a health andfitness midsize business and
(47:04):
they they're part of a global,global chain and they underwent,
over about 18 months, somesignificant changes.
Their business was growing.
They had to optimize the waythat they were doing resource
management.
They had a lot of manualprocesses in how their trainers
and staff were managed acrossdifferent parts of the fitness
(47:24):
chain.
They didn't have quite clearvisibility and they needed to
optimize the way that they werespending.
So they had a lot of challenges.
So the GM of HR and the GM offinance came together and they
started to identify what it isexactly that they needed from
their perspective.
What they ended up doing was wewere engaged to actually
undertake a detailed assessmentof their functional and
(47:47):
non-functional requirements.
What was really insightfulduring this process is what HR
needed and what finance neededin this particular instance, was
similar in some aspects butvery different in others, and
they were only two of theexecutives that needed to be
engaged, because they instigatedthis, because it links to their
resource systems, it links tofinance systems and this is why
(48:09):
it started in there and nottypically in IT.
So we had to go through and takea market scan.
So we ended up doing a marketscan and I think at the time it
was about 40 plus vendors thatwe did a high level brief on,
and then we defined and furtherrefined the scope to short list
and narrow down.
But before we did that, welooked at the internal
(48:30):
constraints that the company mayhave been facing with regards
to their selection criteria thatthey were using preliminarily.
With regards to their selectioncriteria that they were using
preliminarily, we then narroweddown their solution requirements
and also the aspects thatneeded to integrate with their
global head office and where itdid or did not need to integrate
.
And then we narrowed theshortlist down to five
(48:51):
prospective vendors and throughthat we then performed a little
bit of a.
Again, it was done.
It was done.
It was like a closed, a closedRFI, rfq, which meant that the
supplier wasn't inundated withall these tech vendors who knew
that they were about to upgrade.
So we did that on their behalf,which meant they were protected
from you know, the market,knowing it was them, at least
(49:13):
initially, till we narrowed downto five.
When we narrowed down to five,we then we narrowed down to five
.
We then facilitatedcollaborative workshop activity
over about 90 minutes each andactually had the vendors provide
demonstrations based onspecific requirements that we
had identified for this clientand actually had them perform
the demonstrations and show ushow their system would work in
(49:35):
relation to that specific need.
It ended up resulting in somevery significant gaps identified
.
As I mentioned earlier, we wentfrom having about six we
knocked two out already and thenwe had five that went down to
four.
Through that process, we thenwere able to define the pros and
cons.
We were able to provide scoresthat were completely agnostic of
(49:58):
a particular one-person opinion.
We did find a value-to-costmatrix to visually represent the
benefits for the client.
We defined pros and cons ofevery platform and we also
talked about the roadmap toimplement and what that would
look like.
Where an existing solutioncould integrate really well with
things like Active Directory orcloud-based solutions that they
had in the business already.
(50:19):
It may make the implementationeasier versus maybe a solution
that wasn't.
Things we looked at was where'sthe support?
Is the support Australian based?
Is it international?
Are they open certain times, etcetera, et cetera.
We looked at licensing,operational impact support, et
cetera, and ultimately whatended up happening is we were
able to get to a point with theclient where we were able to
narrow down and they were ableto make a decision quite quickly
(50:41):
after that.
So it's just one quick exampleof health and fitness in a
mid-sized business, and thelarger the business, the more
complicated the process is.
I'm just going to take us tosome best practices, so I'll
just quickly pass to lucy forthe best practices, um, and then
we'll wrap up with a couple offinal points sure.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Thank you, um.
Yeah, just some top tips whichare kind of our concluding
thoughts, really, um.
So these are the things that ifyou keep in mind when you're
implementing your ppm, hopefullyit will save you some headaches
.
So the first one that we talkedabout is please get your end
users involved in the selectionprocess.
(51:24):
So what you don't want to do isgo away and pick a tool and
then kind of like subject theusers to that.
You would want them to be partof that journey and to have
their voices kind of heard andtheir requirements heard in that
selection process.
Second top tip is don't let agreat selection process be
(51:46):
degraded by poor implementation.
So, however you kind ofstructure your PPM purchase and
implementation, just make surethat the ppm implementation is
actually treated as a project.
It's probably properlyresourced and there's budget, um
, and all the usual things thatyou would have around an
(52:09):
implementation.
And the reason that we say thatis, um, what you don't want to
end up with is just your pmopeople trying to kind of do this
off the side of a desk, becausethat's just not appropriate for
an implementation of this size.
And then the third one is justmake sure that you keep your
head about you when you'remeeting vendors.
(52:31):
So be really, really clear onyour requirements.
Yes, of course, there's goingto be great presentations and
lots of great collateral, butjust be really clear on what you
want and make sure that youpick a vendor in a really kind
of like rational and structuredway.
So there are concludingthoughts really from the
(52:53):
presentation and the tips that Ihope perhaps help you out.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Thanks, lucy.
And then just to close this out, today I've just put my email
in the chat, so if anyone wantsto discuss anything further,
wants more information, has anyquestions, just really quickly.
The last piece just to sharethat I've just highlighted in
the top right corner the threekey steps as part of the process
.
If you do feel that you needhelp, um, that's sort of
depending on the size of theorganization can be done in like
(53:21):
five to ten days um.
So like a really low, loweffort um initially um, and then
the steps that are outside thebucket are usually the ones that
involve a lot of internalpeople to develop, like the
change implementation etc.
So if you feel that you couldbenefit from that, of course,
please reach out to me.
Otherwise, if you've got anyfeedback at all, please let us
know, because without yourfeedback we don't know whether
(53:43):
we are on the right track.
Um with different ppm sorry,different meetups, so we've got
lots more in the pipeline um.
So, yeah, please reach out myemail's in the chat um, you can
also email us and give us 50 andgive us a call um.
Or if you'd like to have a15-minute chat with me about
anything further, please doreach out.
We'd love to keep theconversation going.
(54:06):
Thank you so much for listeningto this podcast.
Please share this with someoneor rate it if you enjoyed it.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media and to stay up to
date with all things Agile Ideas.
Go to our website,wwwagilemanagementofficecom.
I hope you've been able tolearn, feel or be inspired today
(54:27):
.
Until next time, what's yourAgile Idea?
You're listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted
by Fatima Rabuchi.
For anyone listening out therenot having a good day, please
know there is help out there.
Today's going to be really adeep dive, informative session
on all things project portfoliomanagement, and the reason we
decided to do this type ofmeetup today specifically was
(00:22):
because we're getting a lot ofdifferent questions from a lot
of different clients who areoften already really clear on
what they need in terms of a PPMsolution, but what they don't
understand is how to align whatthe tech providers are actually
putting out there.
A lot of the times, the PPMproviders are really just, you
know, really good at technologyand they don't really understand
(00:43):
the business side.
So effectively being that kindof conduit between the two is
really the reason why we decidedto do this meetup today.
We're going to cover off thekey question of what's a client
advocate?
Just to make that really clearUnderstanding PPM tools and key
capabilities.
What we won't do today and it'sreally important to call this
(01:03):
out is we're not going to tellyou which PPM is the best or not
the best.
There is dozens and dozens ofthem on the market and they all
do different things.
Some of them have amazing AIbuilt in, others are really
old-fashioned, some are based onagile, others are based on
traditional project.
There's so many variations.
So what we will do is we'llhelp you understand the tools in
(01:24):
general and the keycapabilities to be looking for
or to be deep diving into andwhat's actually out there in
terms of capabilities, based onour experience with clients.
But we won't go into specifictech, not in this meetup at the
moment.
We'll also go into PPM solutionfocus areas.
So what this is about is whatare the kind of key five
categories to think about whenidentifying a solution for your
(01:49):
business or your team, and thisalso may be relevant if you
already are in a company thatalready has a PPM.
One client recently reached outand found out that their PPM
solution in this governmentdepartment is being sunsetted,
so it's not going to besupported anymore in about 18
months, so they've got no choicebut to actually change their
PPM provider.
(02:09):
So they're setting up a bit ofa project to go through that as
well.
We'll also go through some ofthe key challenges that we've
experienced to make you awarehow to navigate the selection
process, some top tips, and thenalso take you through a little
bit of an industry insight, casestudy and some Q&A.
So please ask questions at anytime throughout the presentation
in the chat, and we will coverthem off, and we really want to
(02:31):
make sure that you get the mostout of today.
So, on that note, let's start byasking the question of why you
actually are here now.
So thinking about the reasonthat you might be here is
probably going to be one ofthese reasons.
So I'm kind of keen to see I'mjust going to quickly ask in a
(02:53):
poll where are you right now?
Are you looking at a new PPMsolution?
Do you have one in place andyou're looking to upgrade or
being forced to upgrade?
Are you researching thebenefits of a PPM and so you're
looking to upgrade or beingforced to upgrade?
Are you researching thebenefits of a PPM and so you're
unsure about whether or not youhave the right requirements
defined?
Have you picked a PPM solutionand now you just need to
(03:15):
implement?
So you're looking for, like, animplementation path,
implementation strategy.
Or perhaps you're one of thosepeople that have heard a lot
about PPMs but actually don'treally know where you are at the
moment?
You just want to cover off alot of questions that you might
have.
So I'll just give that 30 moreseconds.
Yeah, really keen, so we cantailor the conversation today
around where you are.
(03:35):
Okay, so a lot of people so fartalking about being unsure and
having a lot of questions, somejust doing some research.
Okay, awesome, that's a goodstart.
Thank you for that.
Okay, so first, what is a clientadvocate?
So just to reiterate, as I saidat the beginning, technology
(03:58):
vendors demonstrate capabilityagainst requirements you often
will provide them and they willrespond to requests for
information and requests forproposals.
These usually implementationsare really expensive.
I've never seen a PPMimplementation or even the base
cost for a PPM solution beinganything less than $50,000 as a
starting point and then theprices go up from there, from
(04:19):
implementation, and that's justbased on lots of different
examples as experience.
So your client, as a client, youand your team will understand
what you need.
You'll often develop somethingcalled functional and technical
requirements.
So we want it to do reportinglike this, or we want it to
track financials and link to ourfinance system, or we want it
to be able to be split acrossdifferent regions or teams all
(04:42):
those sorts of questions andcomments and things that you
will identify.
You'll often give that to thetechnology vendor or in some
instances, if your company isnot very mature, the technology
vendor will actually providethat to you and then you've got
to kind of align to them.
So a client advocateeffectively sits in the middle
and helps to coordinate and gothrough that process with you.
So before you go down the pathof PPM, lucy is just going to
(05:05):
quickly take us through whetheror not you're ready.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Thank you.
So yeah, look when we're workingwith our clients and we're
having those initialconversations around do you need
a PPM?
Are you actually ready for aPPM?
There's a few questions that weask, and these are three that
we thought um were worthy ofjust sharing with you guys today
(05:31):
.
So, firstly, are your processessufficiently mature?
Um, so let me use an examplelike, for instance, if you're
investing in a ppm tool, let'ssay, you've got a bit of budget,
you're, you're um, I've got togo ahead to get like a great
tool.
Maybe this tool's got anamazing risk and issue module.
(05:56):
So you're kind of likebrilliant, you sat in um your
pmo function, thinking this isgoing to be amazing.
However, if your organizationthen doesn't have, for instance,
like a great risk and issueframework, a really good
understanding around measurement, as PPM practitioners we can
only go so far.
(06:17):
So the tool will certainly giveus that capability for
uplifting, like the oversight onrisk and issues et cetera, but
it's not a fix all, it's notgoing to create you a framework,
it's not going to uplift yourculture around risk and issue
management.
So we always make sure that ourPMO practitioners kind of
(06:39):
understand what they caninfluence and what they can't in
terms of, like, theimplementation and expectation
of what the PPM tool canactually do.
Secondly, just like any projectthat your organization might run
, is this project actuallysupported?
So PPM tool, like the selectionprocess, the implementation,
(07:03):
it's like any other technicalimplementation.
So we check is theresponsorship?
Is this project actuallyprioritized and strategically
aligned within your organization?
Those things, just like anyprojects, must exist for a PPM
tool.
Implementation, implementationalso.
And thirdly, another really umgood thing to understand is have
(07:28):
we got really clear outcomes inmind and are those outcomes
realistic?
So, in terms of um, the ppmlike, if we're looking um, just
an example here, and there'smany examples that we uncover
with our clients but, forinstance, if you're wanting to
(07:49):
improve your resource management, there's some things that the
PPM tool can help with.
So certainly it can help withbooking resources and forward
planning and having thatoversight and understanding
where those conflicts are.
It can really bring that tolife.
Can it help with resourceretention?
Look, to some extent.
(08:11):
However, there's probably lotsof other things going on within
the organization that may needto be activated at the same time
.
So we really encourage ourclients to kind of think about
the ultimate objective, how farthe PPM tool can take you and
what's the gap and what's beingdone about that so that a really
(08:32):
holistic view can be built anda proper kind of strategic plan
to get you to the end stage.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
Thank you, lucy.
If anyone has any questionsabout that, feel free to put it
into the chat.
Thank you, lucy.
If anyone has any questionsabout that, feel free to put it
into the chat.
So I'm just going to take youthrough the five key PPM
solution focus areas before wedeep dive into a little bit more
of the key capabilities andsome of the challenges.
So when we think about the PPMsolution, regardless of where
you are starting and regardlessof whether you have an existing
(09:02):
PPM capability in-house oryou're starting from scratch, or
perhaps you're working in anorganization and you can see
that they are doing thingsreally manually and it's very
broken up across different silosacross the organization,
perhaps you're trying to thinkabout ways to bring together and
centralize views aroundprojects within the organization
.
Either way, there is five keyareas that, beneath the surface,
(09:26):
are the focus areas.
So when we're doing someplanning and you're thinking
about what it is that you need,I highly recommend that you take
these five focus areas and look.
Sometimes you might run them asindividual workshops, sometimes
you might run them as a littlebit of a deep dive internally
and then with a vendor, etcetera, et cetera.
So the first one, obviouslystrategically as you just
(09:50):
touched on that aroundinvestment management and
portfolio management.
Now you're bringing in a PPMsolution, which means you need
to have some form of portfoliooversight that exists today to
understand what projects aregoing to go into the solution to
begin with.
So, thinking about how thatstrategically will integrate,
and this includes howinformation in the system will
be entered and how thatinformation then gets reported
as well, which then links intoprocess.
(10:12):
So if you think about one ofthe most common parts of a PPM
solution outside of pipelineidentification, project
identification it's usuallyfinance related finance and
resourcing.
So with the finance andresourcing piece, in order to
activate and use that part ofthe PPM solution, you need to
think about how that solution isgoing to integrate with your
(10:34):
existing processes.
A very common example is theorganization's month-end
financial process.
Now if you don't have a PPMsolution in place and you
understand your month end cycleworking with finance and whatnot
for projects and then youimplement a PPM solution, you
need to make sure that theprocesses for month end because
your corporate finance team arenot going to change the
(10:56):
processes to suit the technologyhave to be aligned.
So the technology now needs toadapt to the cycles and the
processes that relate to finance, and that's just one small
example.
The third part of it is toolsand technology.
So one of the things that a lotof clients tend to not do is
they don't actually take a stocktake of what tools and
(11:16):
technologies they have in placebefore they go and bring in a
PPM.
There's two challenges here.
First of all, almost all PPMsolutions now are cloud-based,
and they have a number ofdifferent security requirements
that underpin these solutions,some better than others.
There's a lot of differentrequirements depending on what
region or country you might bein.
(11:37):
In banking, for example,there's some very, very heavy
regulations, and so any datagoing into a PPM solution
resource data, customer data,finance data, et cetera has to
be really well thought through,and so, with tools and
technologies, you might need tothink about how your PPM that
you bring into your organization, or the one that you upgrade to
(11:58):
, may link in with things likeyour active directory, which is,
you know, all the employees inthe business, so that you can
have like a single sign-onexperience.
There's other considerations aswell, and the other
consideration is, if I'mbringing in a new PPM, I would
want to be taking the time andthe initiative to look at what
existing tools and tech am Ireplacing.
(12:20):
So, for example, a company thatwe worked with recently.
They had strict strategysoftware, they had a different
software for tracking timelinesfor projects, they had a
different software for financeand resource tracking and a
number of others as well, andthey were all separately managed
.
So bringing in a PPM solutionthat addressed their
requirements meant that we wereable to actually reduce not only
(12:43):
the use of those tools but, insome instances, completely
remove them.
So you save cost, you save time.
But if you don't take the timeto plan that as part of your
pre-work for your implementation, you may actually end up with a
lot more rework and a lot moreduplication.
And then this brings me toinformation flows.
So this information flow is keybecause, as I mentioned before,
(13:04):
you've got to put the data inin order to get data out, and
rubbish in means rubbish out.
You don't want to bring in aPPM tool, and I've seen this
happen.
So in a local council recently,they were planning and deciding
how they're going to bring itin at a PMO level.
So they were thinking about itfrom wearing my PMO governance
hat.
This is the tool, this is howit's going to work and this is
what I want the PMs to do.
(13:25):
What ended up happening isnobody used it, so none of the
project managers actually usedthe tool, because it wasn't
implemented correctly.
They didn't define theinformation flows accurately at
the beginning, and then the PMsactually felt themselves having
to duplicate data in manualreporting and the PPM platform,
(13:46):
having to duplicate data inmanual reporting and the PPM
platform.
So what they did as aworkaround is the PMO team and
the analysts in the PMO manuallywould take the reports the PMs
would do and actually go andenter into the system themselves
.
It is just such a waste of timeand it was because they didn't
integrate the requirements ofpeople that are going to use it,
which is predominantly yourproject team, and then, finally,
governance.
So when you bring in any newtechnology, first of all you
(14:08):
have to have the fundamentalwho's going to be the users and
what user access matrix am Igoing to have around it?
Who is going to manage the tool?
Is it going to sit in IT?
Now, naturally, there's anassumption that it always sits
in IT, but sometimes it doesn't.
Sometimes it's brought in byfinance, and sometimes it's
brought in by finance with noactual conversation with IT.
(14:30):
So there's a lot of thinkingaround what's the governance
associated with the tool?
How's it going to be managed?
How's the data going to bemaintained?
Is it going to be PMO led or isit going to be led by the CFO's
office?
Is it going to be led by aportfolio manager in IT, and so
forth and so forth.
So setting up and definingthose governance structures
early before you startimplementing a tool will really
(14:50):
go a long way in helping you tomake sure you're successful.
Is there any questions at thispoint on that?
Keeping an eye on the chat, ifthere is, feel free to put them
in.
I'm going to move over tounderstanding PPM tools and key
capabilities and I'll hand backto lucy for this right.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
Thank you um all right.
So just in case there's any umanyone's unsure about what ppm
is, we've just included a nicelittle definition there.
So, um, I'll let you read that.
As a PMO practitioner, I kindof very simply think of the PPM
(15:28):
tool as being my portal into theproject world and I think that
that's quite a good kind of youknow visual to keep in mind.
So when we look at the keycapabilities of a ppm, we're
looking at actuallyunderstanding all of the um, the
project activity that's goingon within the organization, and
(15:52):
this is a place that you go tolook at that.
So anything that um is actuallylike transforming or changing
within your organization interms of a discipline, it should
be listed in here, it should beprioritized and there should be
like proper decision making andselection criteria around
anything that's getting greenlighted to go ahead.
Also, if I want to look at myresources and any kind of hot
(16:17):
spots from a portfolioperspective, this is where I
would be able to go and look atthat.
And perhaps I'm wanting to workwith operational managers to
look at particular stress pointsin terms of workload and change
management.
Again, this is where your PPMtool would really help evidence
those kind of conversations, allof my reporting all
(16:40):
standardized, all in here,everybody using the same
measurement systems.
So then we've got really goodkind of like heat maps of where
the risk exposure is within theorganization and rage management
.
Obviously everything, um allstandardized.
So our risks, our assumptions,our issues, our dependencies,
(17:01):
proper, um, you know, kind ofstructure and approaches and
mitigation strategies and,ideally, workflow around this to
keep everything moving andbeing resolved.
Financial management we'rekeeping all of our finances in
here.
We've usually got anintegration with our finance
(17:22):
system that helps keep themanual effort down.
And, yeah, aspects of ourproject management lifecycle
ideally would be representedwithin the tool.
So if you think kind of likestage gating and investment
milestones, all of thatadministration and effort should
(17:43):
be present within your PPM tool.
That's really helpful forprepping for audits and making
sure that there's due processaround any cash release.
So what drives the need for aPPM?
Lots of things, typicallywithin the clients that we've
worked with.
This is probably our kind ofhit list and the reasons, the
(18:07):
drivers that we see the most.
So, firstly, the need toimprove portfolio prioritization
and selection.
So this is around like actuallyhaving evidence to make proper
strategic decisions, ofstrategic decisions and also
(18:28):
really simply getting anunderstanding of the projects
that are going on within theorganization.
It's amazing how many times wego into organizations and we're
able to go right back to basicsaround, like what even is a
project?
What should we be tracking inhere?
What should we have anoversight of?
What's business as usual?
That kind of really basicdiscussion is often really
(18:51):
foundational for PPMimplementation.
The need to optimize resources Idon't think we've been into an
organization where this isn'trelevant.
We often come across kind ofsingle person points of failure.
There's often people withinorganizations that are called to
be an SME on literally everysingle project and so, again,
(19:15):
your PPM tools are a really goodway of kind of like flushing
that out and understanding whereperhaps there are capability
gaps within the organization.
Strategic alignment Again, thisis like what projects are
happening and do they actuallyalign with strategic outcomes.
So if an organization isspending money, you want to make
(19:37):
sure that you're spending it onthe right things.
Reducing risk I think that one'spretty obvious.
Reducing risk I think thatone's pretty obvious.
And then also driving andtracking performance, and again,
a lot of tools are becomingquite preemptive in terms of
(19:58):
forecasting future trends,particularly around risks and
issues.
So, yeah, this performancetracking and forward view can
really help with your riskmitigation strategies.
Any questions around that?
Or anybody got any kind ofalternative drivers within their
organization that are pushingthem down, you know, trying to
(20:23):
understand whether a PPM tool isappropriate for their
organization?
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Or any surprises.
Feel free to put it in the chatas well.
Um, we'll keep that going okay,thank you.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
Okay, no problem.
So, um, we've we've just kindof drawn out here um.
So you can imagine when you'reimplementing ppm, there's,
there's almost like there's a.
There's a lot of phases in theprocess, but we thought that
we're going to talk about theprocess that we go through
shortly, but we thought it mightbe useful, just just whilst we
(21:01):
um prepare for that discussion,just to talk about some of the
challenges in the actualselection process and then some
of the challenges in theimplementation process, because
they're quite different.
So, look, we've got 10 um thatwe've come up with here.
So perhaps, if I just share umsome of the ones that I think um
(21:25):
could be really relevant tothis group here.
So, firstly, um vendorevaluation.
So what I think is reallyimportant in the, the kind of
like pre-selection stage, is doyou understand, um, what the
requirements are?
So what are your like absolutenon-negotiables and then what
(21:48):
are your nice to haves and whatdo you think you might need in
the future?
So that kind of like reallygood, solid understanding of
your requirements is soimportant, because it's that
that you should be evaluatingagainst.
And the reason that I thinkthat that is really important is
when vendors come in and dodemonstrations.
(22:09):
It's very easy to get taken inwith a really great demo, lots
of great materials, it's allvery exciting, but it's really
really fundamentally importantthat you hold on to what is it
that you actually need as anorganization and where are you
going.
So we've seen quite a fewclients get embroiled in that
(22:34):
kind of demonstration phase andget a little bit kind of um, you
know, bought into the demos andimpressed by those and then
kind of lose themselves withinthat process.
So I guess that that's where uma lot of the work that we do
comes into supporting ppmselection that we've seen that
(22:56):
there's so many times and somany vendor demonstrations that
it's really good to um to keepyour your head about you when
you're um, when you're in thatprocess.
So the other thing that we umthink is really important in the
ppm kind of pre-selection isthe integration points that you
need in your organization, and Ithink the one that I would
(23:18):
really call out is the financesystem.
So usually a key integrationpoint for any PPM, if you want
to avoid any kind of like manualload on your project managers,
is an integration with yourfinance system.
It's a really good projectcontrol and it kind of forces
some good governance aroundforecasting and reporting on
(23:45):
your actuals, et cetera.
But again, it's reallyparamount to make sure that,
whatever your finance system is,that when you're looking at
your PPM selection, that theappropriate technical people are
in the room to make sure thatyou can assess that capability
and not get caught out postselection.
Um.
And then the other thing isaround.
(24:08):
The other one that I think Icall out is the strategic
objectives and reallymaintaining that long-term focus
, that trying to do that balancebetween what do we need to do
right now, what are the gapsthat we've got that we're really
kind of like desperate to get asolution for, and just making
sure that that's balancedagainst the long-term strategic
(24:29):
objectives of the organization.
Yeah, so they're the kind oflike key ones that I think are
worthy to be called out in thepre-selection phase.
All right, so then we come tothe actual implementation.
(24:53):
This is an area that's probablya lot more um familiar to
people, particularly if you'reinvolved in technical
implementations.
And the ppm implementation is,at its essence, a technical
implementation.
Yes, there's lots of downstreamimpacts, yes, there's lots of
change, integration, but it's aproject like um, you know, just
(25:14):
like any other project that theorganization would run.
So again, we've called out whatwe have experienced going wrong
and hopefully for any of yougoing down this pathway this
might help, just to keep frontof mind.
So three call outs from me.
One, something that we see alot and I think it's not just
(25:38):
applicable to ppm implementation, it's probably applicable to
lots of technologyimplementations and it's an
adequate change managementstrategy.
So the problem is, if you don'treally understand the change um
roadmap and really adequatelyinvolve your users, then of
(26:00):
course this is going to lead toum lower adoption or poor
utilization.
So people not fullyunderstanding um what can
actually be done within the ppm,so not getting those um.
The impact would be then notgetting those organizational
benefits that you're hoping forand also just like a lack of
(26:22):
training and involvement inthose kind of like sun pit
environments as you're goingthrough the implementation.
It just is not good for yourusers.
So what you don't want to endup with is like three or four
people that really know whatthey're doing and then the rest
of the organization's been leftbehind.
Again, this is not specific tojust PPM implementations.
(26:43):
But look, change is oftenoverlooked and I think in terms
of when you're implementing asystem that has got lots of
downstream impacts and you wantlots of energy and enthusiasm
behind to get the benefit behind, and then, of course, you
really want to make sure thatyour change management strategy
(27:03):
is solid.
The other really big one that wesee is over-reliance on a
vendor.
So what this means is that theclient hasn't set up adequate
self-sufficiency in terms oftechnical know-how and
capability, and then what thatmeans is that the organization
(27:24):
is not independent enough todrive their own optimization and
maturity pathway, and that'sreally sad if that happens,
because it means that for theorganization it can get
expensive and it can getfrustrating, and then the
relationship with the vendor candegrade, and that's a really
(27:45):
suboptimal outcome and one thatyou'd want to avoid ideally.
And then the other one that Icall out from here is probably
the data migration and reallyunderestimating that.
So data migration, as we know,is always complex.
It's always a lot more timeconsuming than we would imagine,
(28:08):
but depending on the number ofsystems that you want to
integrate with so finance beinga significant one in my mind,
but also anything that isworkflow automated, you just
want to look at what that datamigration looks like and the
strategy around that.
And again, make sure thatyou've got the right people in
(28:31):
the room and sufficient kind ofresource and budget to make sure
that that's optimized andyou're not implementing a system
and then somebody gets lombardwith.
You know, a whole load ofcatch-up around data migration
and a whole heap of umreconciliation that can really
kind of like detract from dayone success.
(28:51):
Yeah, so they're the big callouts from our perspective.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
There's a comment one comment that's coming Michael
is just around some PPMs beingdesigned for waterfall projects
only, and it's so interestingbecause when we looked at all of
the PPM products in the market,there's many and some have been
around for many, many years.
One PPM solution, for example,that I found out about I think
(29:18):
about 10 years ago.
They were talking about theintegration of certain tech that
actually understood out about,about think about 10 years ago
they were talking about theintegration of um, uh, the
integration of certain tech thatactually understood and took
sentiment analysis of reportingthat pms were doing in there to
actually understand whether theywere progressing well or happy
with their projects and thingslike that.
So there's some some ppm toolsthat have now um evolved a lot
(29:38):
over the years, with a lot moresignificant uptake of Agile.
Agile's been around for 25 plusyears, but when we think about
sort of the real drive behindmore Agile ways of working, it
really has picked up in the lastfive to eight years.
And so what I'm seeing in thisspace is there are PPM solutions
that are already longstandingexisting on the market.
(30:00):
You'll see them in the Gartnerquadrants etc.
Et cetera that have gone togreat lengths to invest
significant amount of money tointegrate agile-based versions
that align to their existingplatforms.
There's others that haveactually gone down the path of
taking what they used to haveand making it more agile, so
it's just more flexible andadaptable to any type of project
(30:22):
, not based on any you know anymethods or any project
management methods or ways ofworking.
And then there's others thatare marketing themselves as
agile and waterfall and all ofthese other types but actually
don't like they don't cut itwhen it comes to actually
utilizing them.
And what people find in thesebusinesses who implement these
(30:44):
tools is they actually have tobring in all these other bits of
parts to support things thatare not in there, like missing
time sheeting process or thetimeline management in there.
So then they're using thingslike you know, smart sheet for
timeline management and justreally clunky.
So there's kind of threedifferent kind of avenues with
relation to that, in terms ofAmani, your question.
(31:06):
So in terms of experienceimplementing PPM for portfolio
portfolios, so this is verypossible and the larger the PPM,
the more advanced functionalityusually that they have.
There are a few.
Again, if you look at theGartner Quadrant, there's some
popular ones there, the placethat this is usually done is
typically in your larger sort oftier one businesses.
In banking, for example, theydefinitely have implemented
(31:30):
different ways of working inparticular one bank as an
example across the differentdivisional portfolios, because
they all run differently and insome of the banks now a lot of
them have gone to the agile waysof working.
So even more so they've changedthe way that they run across
the different portfolios, so youcan actually customize some of
these tools to suit.
But, as we talked about before,it's really understanding and
(31:53):
making sure you have the definedways of working processes, all
of that understood first,because what you don't want is
one recent example of anautomotive company who had a ppm
implementation.
It was one person who broughtit in, they set it up the way
that they liked and the companynow spends about two hundred
thousand dollars a year onlicenses and only one person
(32:14):
uses the tool.
So that's the level that of ofyou know um ineffectiveness when
you just drive it on oneperson's opinion.
Yeah, that's a good point,fatima.
Speaker 2 (32:32):
I think the other thing that's probably worthy of
us thinking about is the wholekind of premise of the PPM is to
bring standardisation to theorganisation, and so the way
that we often structure theseconversations is there's always
elements of governance andcontrol that are applicable to
every single project, regardlessof the delivery methodology
(32:56):
that's used to deliver theoutcomes of that particular
project.
So what we find is the PPM toolis used to provide that
standardization in terms of wayof working, investment slate,
funding, the approach to riskand issue management and
financials, etc.
(33:17):
I think in practical terms,what we do see is that often the
planning components are doneseparately and not within the
PPM tool.
So the PPM tool literally justtracks some key milestones, and
I think that that's a way ofkind of responding to the
(33:39):
delivery methods that areappropriate for different
projects.
Speaker 1 (33:44):
It's a really good call and it takes us to our next
point, so navigating selection.
So I want to preface this bysaying you are probably maybe
some of you are not the decisionmakers and maybe don't have the
opportunity to influence whichtool, or to start a project and
actually bringing in a tool orupgrading a tool.
I am keen, though, if you couldjust put in the chat if you
(34:08):
believe that you are actually adecision maker or significantly
can influence the selectionprocess.
Just a yes if you are one ofthose, and for those that aren't
which is fine as well I'llshare some tips in how you can
try to influence when you maynot be in the position of, you
know, authority to drive this.
So yes if you are, and ifyou're not, no, it doesn't
(34:31):
matter where you sit, becauseultimately, this process can
actually be beneficial to bothsides.
So yeah, just yes or no.
That would be amazing.
So, at the moment, when we thinkabout navigating the process,
this is literally thestep-by-step process that we
would typically take.
Now I will call out that itseems very simple and very
(34:52):
cyclical, and the steps takenand you know, just one after the
other, but there is a lot ofsub-steps that happen underneath
the surface of this.
So when we think about whereyou are or your organization is
whether it's today or whetherit's in an organization down the
line, or perhaps you're sort ofstarting a new role and you're
(35:13):
looking at it, or maybe you'vegot an existing PPM that you see
is just not effective.
So the first thing isunderstanding, obviously, the
purpose and the why.
We've talked about that quiteat length.
But one of the things that'sreally important is if you're in
a position where you're notintroducing a PPMU but you've
got one of those problems orchallenges that I just outlined
earlier around the PPM you haveis not working, or maybe it's
(35:35):
outdated or maybe it's beensunsetted, etc.
Then I think you need to beable to advocate the
conversation as to why thecurrent system or tool or
process is not working.
And I would recommend, ifyou're not in a position of
making the decision yourself butwant to sort of influence it, I
would look at picking, you know, two or three key features that
don't exist in the existingtool, or problems or challenges
(35:58):
that you have to then introducethose to you know, know your
one-up or your executive orwhoever it is that makes the
decision, to help themunderstand the reason why you
may need to make that change.
A lot of the time, when youintroduce a PPM solution, and if
you do it even partially rightby linking systems or bringing
in data from finance or HR etcetera, it becomes really hard
(36:23):
to change.
It takes time and money andeffort and, as Lucy said before,
it's a whole project in itself.
And this is really importantbecause there's some really
great marketing out there by PPMcompanies and some of them are
really more advanced than others, and there's some good ones and
there's some bad ones.
It's the same as any techplatform that exists out there.
It doesn't matter what industrywe're in.
(36:43):
So you need to be prepared fromthe client side to ask the
right questions, and so this iswhere the needs assessment
activity comes in.
So you need to think about whatit is that your current needs
in your organization are and thegoals, because your ppm should
scale with you, particularly ifit's a um.
It's a ppm that is, you know,been around for a really long
time.
(37:03):
It's not just something thatyou know came up yesterday.
There's a lot of new ones thatare based on agile I've just
popped up recently and um,they're sort of iterating them
as they go, but maybe they'renot going to be um scalable.
So you need to think about likeone of the questions we would
ask in the in the technology umdeep dive with the vendors is
what is on your product roadmap?
What actually have you gotcoming up down the line that's
(37:25):
going to benefit our business ormaybe impact our business as
well?
Researching the market, soevaluating features, looking at
different vendors, doing thepricing there are definitely
some really good research outthere.
I keep talking about Ghanabecause that's one of the most
popular.
A lot of companies tend to usethat data, but also do some of
your own data.
(37:45):
Look at existing tools that areactually in the market that are
not only based on feedback fromothers that you may know, but
look for ones that have workedwell and others that haven't,
and understand why.
So, as I said, one really big,popular tool that was used
recently in automotive failed todo what it was supposed to do,
not for lack of technologyimplementation, but for how it
(38:08):
was defined in the needsassessment and requirements that
were built by the clientthemselves.
So do your research, understandthe functionality that you need
and also look at whether or not.
You are looking for specificthings that are for your
industry.
A lot of PPM solutions areindustry agnostic, so you don't
have to look for one that'sspecific for banking or retail
(38:30):
or whatnot, but there aredefinitely some that have more
features than others.
When you are going through theprocess of actually selecting a
PPM solution and you'veidentified the market, you've
looked at your prospectivevendors, you've narrowed down
your list you should have aselection criteria that you
actually work towards.
This actually enables you to doscoring and the scoring process
(38:52):
should be really clear andagreed up front but also it
saves you from having anindividual who thinks that they
maybe know everything, like theautomotive example who actually
doesn't.
And then therefore, the decisionaround the technology solution
is skewed towards one person'sopinion.
So having some scoring willenable you to make a fair
(39:14):
assessment of the differentsuppliers that come to you and
provide you that solution.
Once you've gone through thatfirst four steps, you then
probably will have a narroweddown shortlist.
What you don't want to do ishave you know 40 vendors that
you've done a market scan of andthen realize you have to
interview 40 vendors and bringthem in to do demos, and that's
(39:35):
no one has time for that.
So what you want to do is, whenyou get to a shortlist, you
probably want a short list.
I would say maybe three to sixat most.
Um, most companies will go forthree because procurement forces
them to have three, but I don'tmind sometimes having a couple
of extras in there, because whatyou might think is the right
solution sometimes might not be.
(39:56):
And we went through thisprocess with with a company a
health and fitness company, um,not that long ago, and what we
realized is the two of the threejust absolutely did not tick
all the requirements when wedelve deeper into things like
their product roadmap and otherthings.
So by having those additionalthree suppliers, we were able to
then focus our shortlistevaluation on the four, and
(40:19):
that's where evaluating thevendors against the selection
criteria Now the selectioncriteria you have in that first
four steps will be a much, muchhigher level of detail when you
get to evaluating the vendorsafter you've shortlisted.
That's the next level down.
This is where you're reallygetting to a point where you're
ascertaining specifically foryour organization what it is
(40:41):
that you need and you'reactually asking vendors for
demonstrations against yourspecific requirements, whereas
in the selection criteria on theright side it's more of a broad
show us what you can do, canyou do this, can you do that?
And then we narrow down torecommendations.
So this is where you not onlyidentify and make a
recommendation, but you'll alsoidentify risks and issues.
(41:02):
Not any supplier out there isgoing to tick every box 100%.
They're just not.
And one thing you've got to becareful when making a
recommendation, or having arecommendation made to you, if
you're the decision maker isthat we factored in not only the
possible risks and issues withour existing tech and existing
solution we may have in place,or if we're bringing in
(41:22):
something new, but actuallythinking about the possibility
of how the implementation couldwork would work, et cetera.
So thinking aboutrecommendation being
comprehensive and theinformation sufficient enough
that it enables the decisionmaker to make an informed
decision that then will benefitthem and link to those
organisational requirements.
(41:43):
And that decision stage iswhere you then go into your
negotiation and you should havedefined your implementation plan
.
So there are the eight keysteps in the process.
Is there any questions at thispoint on that?
Okay, I'll keep moving, but ifthere's any questions, please
(42:05):
raise them.
So I'm going to take youthrough a couple of industry
insights and then a quick casestudy and then we'll wrap up
with some top tips and bestpractices.
So in terms of the industryinsights that we can share, so
you can see three examples therethere's automotive, banking and
finance and energy.
(42:25):
With the automotive example,I've sort of really probably
talked about that.
The only other thing I will addis the vendor evaluation process
was too narrow.
So what this particularsupplier did sorry client did is
they just went to a reallywell-known popular report and
they just picked one in the topcorner quadrant and said that's
what we're going with.
That not necessarily always theright decision, because it
(42:48):
means that they didn't do any ofthe pre-work, they just wanted
to hurry and get things so theycan automate their processes.
The problem is they didn'tactually have the processes
understood.
Now, I'm not suggesting youhave to have every process
defined, but you need tounderstand what it is you're
bringing the tech for,particularly because tech leads
to automation and also, as Isaid, the ongoing costs for this
(43:09):
company was in the hundreds ofthousands per year in licensing,
and the reason no one used itis there was absolutely no
change management to implementthe tool.
No change management.
It was non-existent.
Considering it's a largeautomotive business, you would
have thought that they wouldimplement that, but because it
was a one-person led band, itmeant that they failed on the
change management side.
(43:30):
In the banking example one ofthe banks that we've worked with
and not in the PPM space, butwere there when they were doing
it they developed the PPMsolution.
So in banking they typically dochange systems and that does
happen more frequently thanmaybe other companies.
But in this organization theydecided that they were gonna
update their PPM system and theywere gonna move to another
(43:54):
popular brand named One, andwhat they did there is they then
developed.
They had a group, a big project, lots of budget, and they
developed the system in completeisolation of anyone in project
management office governanceroles.
Now, considering there's a lotof elements of governance
associated with the use of thistool and it's the PMOs in this
bank that were driving projectmanagers to actually use the
(44:17):
tool, you would have thoughtthat they would have integrated
their opinions.
Now, what happened was whenthey went to roll out, they
actually ran a number of cohortsand they brought PMO and then
in the banks at the time therewas probably about anywhere from
100 to 200 PMO managers.
So they're brought in the PMOsinto several cohorts.
I was in one of those at thetime and when they were running
(44:39):
through the training, if I cantell you the amount of questions
that came up with gaps,opportunities and risks
associated with the PPM thatthey had completely customized,
it would absolutely shock you.
We were picking things out thatwere just problems, problems,
problems, and because theydidn't factor in the right
(44:59):
people in that process, it ledto to those challenges.
Um, they were very, veryheavily reliant on sort of your
traditional uh methods in termsof delivery and they effectively
had to throw away two milliondollars that they spent in
customizing the ppm solution.
They literally gutted thesystem and they started again.
(45:20):
Now in banking, you've probablygot the money, but still what a
waste of time.
And then finally, in the energyexample.
So in the energy example, thecompany lacked project
management, maturity and justfundamentals.
So they weren't really surewhere to start and they had gaps
in their processes.
So, effectively, all of theprocesses between HR and finance
(45:41):
and risk, et cetera, was allvery manual.
So what they needed to do isactually evolve their processes
to at least what we'd call alevel two, meaning repeatable
processes.
Before they started to automatethe processes.
They didn't go as far asimplementing a system before
fixing processes.
(46:01):
So that was a really good ideafor them.
But they started to introduceusers across the company to the
processes before they thenbrought in the system and
increased the adoption as aresult.
So the executives were highlyengaged.
They were, it was led from thetop and they were actually part
of the first few rounds oftraining.
(46:23):
And then also the processeswere understood.
First the integration betweendepartments was understood and
then they started the selectionprocess for PPM providers,
because that can take severalmonths in some instances.
So I'm hoping that some of thatresonates.
I'm keen to get your thoughtson any of that if you want to
throw any comments in the chat.
Otherwise, I'm going to takeyou into just a little bit of a
(46:43):
deep dive case study with healthand fitness.
Um, unless there's anyone,anyone who's got any questions
at this point, okay, perfect.
If there is, lucy will call itout, but I'm going to take you
through a quick case study.
So this company was a health andfitness midsize business and
(47:04):
they they're part of a global,global chain and they underwent,
over about 18 months, somesignificant changes.
Their business was growing.
They had to optimize the waythat they were doing resource
management.
They had a lot of manualprocesses in how their trainers
and staff were managed acrossdifferent parts of the fitness
(47:24):
chain.
They didn't have quite clearvisibility and they needed to
optimize the way that they werespending.
So they had a lot of challenges.
So the GM of HR and the GM offinance came together and they
started to identify what it isexactly that they needed from
their perspective.
What they ended up doing was wewere engaged to actually
undertake a detailed assessmentof their functional and
(47:47):
non-functional requirements.
What was really insightfulduring this process is what HR
needed and what finance neededin this particular instance, was
similar in some aspects butvery different in others, and
they were only two of theexecutives that needed to be
engaged, because they instigatedthis, because it links to their
resource systems, it links tofinance systems and this is why
(48:09):
it started in there and nottypically in IT.
So we had to go through and takea market scan.
So we ended up doing a marketscan and I think at the time it
was about 40 plus vendors thatwe did a high level brief on,
and then we defined and furtherrefined the scope to short list
and narrow down.
But before we did that, welooked at the internal
(48:30):
constraints that the company mayhave been facing with regards
to their selection criteria thatthey were using preliminarily.
With regards to their selectioncriteria that they were using
preliminarily, we then narroweddown their solution requirements
and also the aspects thatneeded to integrate with their
global head office and where itdid or did not need to integrate
.
And then we narrowed theshortlist down to five
(48:51):
prospective vendors and throughthat we then performed a little
bit of a.
Again, it was done.
It was done.
It was like a closed, a closedRFI, rfq, which meant that the
supplier wasn't inundated withall these tech vendors who knew
that they were about to upgrade.
So we did that on their behalf,which meant they were protected
from you know, the market,knowing it was them, at least
(49:13):
initially, till we narrowed downto five.
When we narrowed down to five,we then we narrowed down to five
.
We then facilitatedcollaborative workshop activity
over about 90 minutes each andactually had the vendors provide
demonstrations based onspecific requirements that we
had identified for this clientand actually had them perform
the demonstrations and show ushow their system would work in
(49:35):
relation to that specific need.
It ended up resulting in somevery significant gaps identified
.
As I mentioned earlier, we wentfrom having about six we
knocked two out already and thenwe had five that went down to
four.
Through that process, we thenwere able to define the pros and
cons.
We were able to provide scoresthat were completely agnostic of
(49:58):
a particular one-person opinion.
We did find a value-to-costmatrix to visually represent the
benefits for the client.
We defined pros and cons ofevery platform and we also
talked about the roadmap toimplement and what that would
look like.
Where an existing solutioncould integrate really well with
things like Active Directory orcloud-based solutions that they
had in the business already.
(50:19):
It may make the implementationeasier versus maybe a solution
that wasn't.
Things we looked at was where'sthe support?
Is the support Australian based?
Is it international?
Are they open certain times, etcetera, et cetera.
We looked at licensing,operational impact support, et
cetera, and ultimately whatended up happening is we were
able to get to a point with theclient where we were able to
narrow down and they were ableto make a decision quite quickly
(50:41):
after that.
So it's just one quick exampleof health and fitness in a
mid-sized business, and thelarger the business, the more
complicated the process is.
I'm just going to take us tosome best practices, so I'll
just quickly pass to lucy forthe best practices, um, and then
we'll wrap up with a couple offinal points sure.
Speaker 2 (51:03):
Thank you, um.
Yeah, just some top tips whichare kind of our concluding
thoughts, really, um.
So these are the things that ifyou keep in mind when you're
implementing your ppm, hopefullyit will save you some headaches
.
So the first one that we talkedabout is please get your end
users involved in the selectionprocess.
(51:24):
So what you don't want to do isgo away and pick a tool and
then kind of like subject theusers to that.
You would want them to be partof that journey and to have
their voices kind of heard andtheir requirements heard in that
selection process.
Second top tip is don't let agreat selection process be
(51:46):
degraded by poor implementation.
So, however you kind ofstructure your PPM purchase and
implementation, just make surethat the ppm implementation is
actually treated as a project.
It's probably properlyresourced and there's budget, um
, and all the usual things thatyou would have around an
(52:09):
implementation.
And the reason that we say thatis, um, what you don't want to
end up with is just your pmopeople trying to kind of do this
off the side of a desk, becausethat's just not appropriate for
an implementation of this size.
And then the third one is justmake sure that you keep your
head about you when you'remeeting vendors.
(52:31):
So be really, really clear onyour requirements.
Yes, of course, there's goingto be great presentations and
lots of great collateral, butjust be really clear on what you
want and make sure that youpick a vendor in a really kind
of like rational and structuredway.
So there are concludingthoughts really from the
(52:53):
presentation and the tips that Ihope perhaps help you out.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Thanks, lucy.
And then just to close this out, today I've just put my email
in the chat, so if anyone wantsto discuss anything further,
wants more information, has anyquestions, just really quickly.
The last piece just to sharethat I've just highlighted in
the top right corner the threekey steps as part of the process
.
If you do feel that you needhelp, um, that's sort of
depending on the size of theorganization can be done in like
(53:21):
five to ten days um.
So like a really low, loweffort um initially um, and then
the steps that are outside thebucket are usually the ones that
involve a lot of internalpeople to develop, like the
change implementation etc.
So if you feel that you couldbenefit from that, of course,
please reach out to me.
Otherwise, if you've got anyfeedback at all, please let us
know, because without yourfeedback we don't know whether
(53:43):
we are on the right track.
Um with different ppm sorry,different meetups, so we've got
lots more in the pipeline um.
So, yeah, please reach out myemail's in the chat um, you can
also email us and give us 50 andgive us a call um.
Or if you'd like to have a15-minute chat with me about
anything further, please doreach out.
We'd love to keep theconversation going.
(54:06):
Thank you so much for listeningto this podcast.
Please share this with someoneor rate it if you enjoyed it.
Don't forget to follow us onsocial media and to stay up to
date with all things Agile Ideas.
Go to our website,wwwagilemanagementofficecom.
I hope you've been able tolearn, feel or be inspired today
(54:27):
.
Until next time, what's yourAgile Idea?
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!