Introduction
Higher education CIOs are more challenged than ever to support customers and maintain existing IT investments while continuing to innovate. CIO commitments are also growing faster than their resources and budgets. Many times the results are a reduced role in strategic innovation, blown budgets, missed commitments, difficulty adapting to changes, slow evolution and reduced quality. Many CIOs are struggling to keep up and are turning to project and portfolio management (PPM) as a solution.
While the benefits of PPM squarely address the aforementioned issues a PPM solution implementation is challenging for even the most skilled IT/PMO organizations. Many of the challenges experienced are due to the implementation approach. A standard software implementation approach for PPM often results in exceptionally high budget and schedule risk. The typical culprits driving risk and failure are solution complexity, poorly phased rollout plans and insufficient consideration of the project environment maturity.
Project Environment
1. The aggregate of people, stakeholders, culture, budget, perspectives, processes, commitments, demands, capacity, constraints, objectives, tools, relationships, history, skill mix and skill dispersion surrounding efforts that are contemplated, devised, or planned.
How do the most successful leaders approach PPM and IT Governance?
Having exposure to many colleges and universities addressing PPM and IT Governance solutions we have an inside perspective on how top IT/PMO leaders successfully approach implementation. The best are able to navigate the consensus and community based higher education environment, create necessary buy-in, help the organization achieve its objectives more efficiently and raise the strategic profile of the IT organization or PMO. These high performers first think and communicate objectives in terms of how increasing PPM maturity helps the whole community (strategy) and then align PPM solution capabilities with methodically achieving time based maturity based goals.
Why is a maturity based approach important to higher education?
The higher education environment typically places more emphasis on building consensus among committees, stakeholders, managers and end users than their corporate counterparts. Additionally, colleges and universities prefer (as much as possible) to take a gradual approach to introducing new solutions in order to reduce risk, insure adoption and insure success.
A maturity based approach enables leadership to create this group buy-in and solid adoption by mapping the capabilities provided by PPM solutions directly to the goals and needs of each group in their community. It also allows leadership to clearly articulate a short and long term evolution path. The evolution path clearly describes how each new capability that is added over time will further the maturity of each group as well further the achievement of the organizations over arching strategic goals. The maturity approach should also go beyond recommendations and provide clear and executable steps to achieving the detailed objectives.
How does the maturity based approach differ from a standard implementation approach?
Sound the alarm when thinking or hearing: “I’ve got a good plan. I’ll use the PPM software approach that worked when I was with _________(insert any non-higher education organization name here).”
A maturity based approach doesn’t focus on implementing features and functionality. A maturity based approach begins with first documenting and agreeing upon the institution’s strategic goals, stakeholders’ strategic goals and PMO/IT strategic goals. This is an important step because these goals serve as the anchor point for determining desired maturity. The second step is to conduct a careful assessment of the current maturity of the project organization from a project environment viewpoint (components defined earlier in the article). Once documented and agreed upon current maturity will serve as the baseline for improvement. The next step is to agree upon and document the current weaknesses, threats and opportunities relating to current project environment maturity level. The foundation is now set for creating an actionable evolution plan.
To determine a meaningful (i.e. fundable) desired maturity state, write down each strategic objective, each strength, each weakness, each threat and each opportunity. Now, list all IT Governance and PPM capabilities that the organization does not effectively utilize. Contemplate how each capability would support each goal, resolve each weakness or threat or leverage strengths. Clearly document the alignment of relevant capabilities.
The “GAP” between as-is and desired states can now be clearly established. The aligned PPM capabilities become “deficit components” and need to be broken down into high level and detailed buckets (high level to create stakeholder understanding and buy-in and detailed to guide practitioner execution). Each deficit component is then prioritized and placed on a timeline that leads from the as-is to desired maturity level. PPM solution capabilities and processes can then be clearly mapped to address each deficit area. When evaluating PPM solutions consider if the solution can be implemented in small chunks that align with your maturity plan and make sure it is easy to use to insure adoption. The result of the GAP analysis should be a simple picture (i.e. easily understandable plan) painted for all stakeholder groups explaining how the solution will drive the organization’s success. This step is critical to build the buy-in necessary for success and to justify funding.
What are the approaches for a college or university to measure, monitor and drive maturity?
There are many maturity measurement models some include OPM3, CMMI, ITIL, P.E.M.M. etc.. For higher education the model needs to guide practitioners but also be simple for outsiders to grasp. OPM3, CMMI and ITIL are very comprehensive practitioners tools but they are very complicated to implement and difficult for those funding and supporting PPM efforts (stakeholders) to understand. In higher education we’ve found the P.E.M.M. (Project Environment Maturity Model) to be highly effective because it is well suited for building the necessary stakeholder buy-in to insure PPM success in the short and long term. The PEMM is a solid practitioner’s tool (detailed execution guide) but almost as importantly it serves as an internal marketing tool that paints a clear picture for anyone from the president to students to understand the following points.
- How does additional maturity allow the whole organization to achieve its strategic objectives more efficiently?
- How can specific tangible steps be taken to achieve the desired maturity level?
- How does each step in the maturity model benefit each stakeholder?
- How does each maturity component address identified strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the project environment?
- What are the priorities and order of actions to be taken to achieve desired maturity?
How does IT/PMO leadership benefit directly from the maturity based PPM implementation approach?
- The approach will help raise the profile of IT from a provider of maintenance and support to a key strategic player and source of business intelligence driving universities to spend project dollars and resources most effectively to achieve strategic objectives.
- A detailed maturity assessment will help leadership craft a concise strategic operating plan that will support the rapidly changing and resource constrained environment within the context of the university’s strategy.
- The maturity approach will allow leadership to clearly articulate to all stakeholders how the new IT/PMO operations strategy directly drives organizational performance.
- The evolution that occurs when implementing PPM in a maturity based model will help increase IT’s available funding by clearly demonstrating benefits to all stakeholders and aligning IT spending clearly with university objectives.
- The approach empowers leadership to more efficiently and effectively manage interrelated IT projects, operations support, resource demands, and committee approval structures, Trustee oversight and stakeholder support.
