Case Study: From Initiative Overload to Project Portfolio Management

This case study demonstrates the success of Project Portfolio Management and the importance of having visibility and robust oversight of your entire portfolio of change.  The techniques described have been repeated successfully with many other businesses I have supported and achieved similar results.

The Company

The private wealth management arm of a well known global banking group, with offices in several jurisdictions.

The Business Problem

Internal changes within the parent bank had resulted in this standalone business reporting into a new global Division.  This Division required the business to implement a new operating model resulting in a lot of change in terms of processes, procedures and management oversight. 

In parallel with the organisation change there was a general tightening of the regulatory environment which required a number of compliance related changes. 

The conflict between business growth initiatives, regulatory improvements and senior management restructuring caused the organisation to suffer from ‘initiative overload’ – too many projects being run simultaneously with limited resources. 

Most projects were rated as high priority with the inevitable outcome of missed deadlines and project overruns.  Support staff were ‘fire-fighting’, responding to whoever shouted the loudest or which process was the most broken. The organisation shifted to only dealing with urgent, whilst the really important things only got tackled when they themselves became urgent. This was not a good state of affairs.

The Solution

I was initially commissioned to provide independent management of one of the internal business change projects.  However, it quickly became evident that this project would not achieve its objectives in the given time-frame because of a lack of formal project discipline within the organisation. There was also no dedicated effort by internal subject matter experts (SMEs) and managers.

Standard methodology

I recommended a standardised approach to project management, using the initial project as a prototype with simple templates to be used for project briefs, business cases, project initiation documents and regular status reporting. 

My methodology was based on the industry standard PRINCE2 but simplified to ensure it was appropriate and manageable for the size of organisation and projects.  Once senior executives saw the benefits for the first project they requested that all business change projects adopted the same methodology.

In parallel with the project management methodology I also undertook an audit of all work that could not be categorised as ‘business as usual’ (BAU).  This review identified well over 40 initiatives that were absorbing management time.  However, outside of the IT Department there were no formal methods to initiate, prioritise or govern this non-BAU change.  Even within the IT Department it was discovered that the PRINCE2 methodology (rolled out by Group IT in the European head office) was being poorly used due to its heavy bureaucracy and unwieldy documentation.

I recommended establishing a central change Committee, chaired by the Chief Operating Officer to oversee the portfolio of change and ensure that individual projects were prioritised and aligned with the group strategy.  The solution was flexible enough to suit small one-off projects lasting a couple of months to longer term strategic programmes of change.

The first few meetings were quite painful as each of the 40+ initiatives were reviewed against standard agreed criteria and reprioritised.  It came as quite a surprise to the local senior management team that there was so much going on, with many initiatives being started without senior management buy-in or any formal alignment to the agreed strategy.

Project Portfolio Management

With no budget for dedicated project portfolio management solutions I designed a spreadsheet based reporting system, that required each project manager or initiative lead to complete a single page status summary each month.  The focus of this ‘project scorecard’ was to collect key strategic data with minimal overhead.  The results were rolled up into a summary sheet with one line per project, providing senior management with the following key information:

•                 Project name and objective
•                 Sponsor and manager
•                 Start date, planned and forecast end dates
•                 Priority (Mandatory, high, medium or low)
•                 RAG status
•                 Trend (i.e. improving or getting worse)
•                 Budget (actual vs planned)
•                 Benefit Category
•                 Commentary

The Benefits

Adopting a portfolio approach to project management, effectively creating a project management office or PMO, gave the organisation much needed clarity around their business and technology change initiatives.  Some projects were stopped to enable others to have a greater share of the limited resources, whilst others were reprioritised.  This resulted in the remaining projects being completed on time and within budget.

Another related benefit was a general improvement in staff morale as they could see the improvements that the new approach provided.  There was less frustration and people felt more valued.  There is nothing worse than trying to juggle too many initiatives as well as carrying a demanding day job – the inevitable result was that everything got done badly.

The simple spreadsheet based approach to portfolio reporting and standard project status reports required minimal overhead to produce but provided the necessary management oversight and key performance indicators.  This approach was so successful the templates and spreadsheets were adopted by the Division head office as part of the Group Chief Operating Officers regular monthly reporting cycle.

The Assurify Consulting Mission

My ambition is simple – to raise the standards of project management and improve the success rates of projects, programmes and portfolios.

If you can see how the techniques described in this case study could help your business then please get in touch and I can provide you with more information.

Paul Every
Assurify Consulting, Jersey