Last Chapter Event:
"SPMO - Strategy and Portfolio Management"
The need to successfully execute strategic plans is increasingly being treated as a key element of corporate governance. However, the statistics reflecting actual success in achieving strategic objectives seem to very closely match those for achieving project success. Put simply, the track record is significantly less than exemplary!
A lot of research and energy is devoted to strategy formulation, and it is widely recognised that executing strategy usually requires big changes, and that implementing those changes will require an organisation to run projects, but very little research seems to have been devoted to the practical question of how to make sure that strategy is executed successfully using a robust and consistently successful approach.
Traditional PMOs tasked with execution of strategic projects have incorporated elements of portfolio management and have then simply applied standard PMO processes to projects labelled as 'strategic'. In most cases they have failed to improve the success rates, largely because they have failed to effectively bring together those people with responsibility for strategy (senior management tasked with implementing change at various levels of the organisation) with those responsible for ensuring the changes get made properly (project managers and PMO staff).
TenStep, in conjunction with our partners 2GC Active Management, have taken our experience in strategic performance management and project portfolio management, and through our work with key clients facing this challenge, have identified and built a practical version of the Strategic PMO that brings people together in a practical and simple process to ensure a much higher chance of achieving strategic success.
This essentially involves integrating the 3rd generation balanced scorecard design and review process with PMI compliant Project Portfolio Management and Project Management processes in a new version of the SPMO.
This provides a common approach and greatly enhanced communication and consensus (cross functional and across business units) among two core groups of people:
- Management involved in strategic planning and execution
- Project managers and those responsible for administering and supporting the balanced scorecard and PMO processes.
This solution, the real SPMO, effectively addresses the single biggest cause of both strategic and project failure - communication and stakeholder consensus.
It simultaneously provides a practical, simple and relatively rapid process for getting strategic performance under measurable control and for incorporating critical elements such as risk management and building effective integration of these with operational processes and the planning cycle. It drives consensus, commitment and ownership of strategic change at all levels of the organisation.
Ultimately this process will allow OPM3® assessment and certification to be effectively used to improve and demonstrate best practice in strategic execution.
Statistics on PMO, Portfolio Management etc collected during the talk are given in the presentation as published on
PMI Melbourne site.
Chris Bragg, PMP, Dipl. B. Sc., TenStep Australia (Partner) & TenStep Middle East (Managing Director).
