As an IT leader, managing multiple projects can be overwhelming, especially when they all have different priorities and timelines. This is where Project Portfolio Management (PPM) comes in. PPM is a framework that allows IT organizations to manage multiple projects simultaneously by aligning them with the organization’s strategic goals and objectives.
In this blog, we’ll explore the benefits of Project Portfolio Management and how integrating it with an IT Service Management (ITSM) platform can enhance its effectiveness. We will also discuss some best practices that IT leaders should follow when implementing PPM.
Benefits of Project Portfolio Management
There are many benefits to taking a PPM approach to project management within your organization. These benefits include:
- Better resource allocation – With PPM, IT leaders can prioritize projects based on their importance and allocate resources accordingly. This helps ensure that resources are used efficiently and effectively and that the most critical projects get the necessary resources to succeed.
- Improved decision-making – PPM provides a comprehensive view of all ongoing and proposed projects, allowing IT leaders to make informed decisions about which projects to pursue and which to postpone. This helps reduce project failures and ensures that resources are invested in projects that are most likely to deliver value.
- Enhanced risk management – PPM enables IT leaders to identify and mitigate project risks early on by providing a centralized view of all projects. This helps minimize the impact of risks on the organization and improves the success rate of projects.
- Better alignment with strategic goals – PPM aligns projects with an organization’s strategic goals and objectives. This ensures that projects are selected based on their ability to contribute to the organization’s long-term success and that resources are invested in projects that support its strategic direction.
Should You Integrate PPM with IT Service Management?
Integrating PPM with an IT Service Management platform can enhance its effectiveness in several ways:
- Improved visibility – Integrating PPM with ITSM provides a unified view of all IT projects and services, enabling IT leaders to make informed decisions about resource allocation and project prioritization.
- Enhanced collaboration – Combining ITSM with PPM enables IT teams to work together more effectively, ensuring that projects are completed on time and within budget.
- Better alignment with business objectives – Because you can see all projects in play and all work being done when you combine PPM and ITSM, IT leaders are better equipped to align IT projects with business objectives and demonstrate the value of IT to the business.
With TeamDynamix, you can get ITSM and PPM on a single, no-code platform. This single-platform approach allows for better resource capacity planning. Resource capacity planning allows you to get a big-picture view of your entire IT organization, allowing you to balance workloads across projects and support; and to see the different types of work that need to be done at any given time. This approach is especially useful when you have limited resources, but an increase in demand for the support of remote learning and remote workforces.
In addition, TeamDynamix allows you to convert tickets into projects without missing a beat. Technicians and managers can see all the work happening in just one dashboard, there’s no need to switch between tools.
PPM Best Practices
So how can you implement a PPM approach to project management within your organization? Here are some best practices to follow:
- Align projects with strategic goals: Prioritize projects that align with the organization’s strategic goals and objectives to ensure that resources are invested in projects that deliver value.
- Use data-driven decision-making: Base project decisions on data rather than intuition to ensure that projects are selected based on their ability to contribute to the organization’s success.
- Establish a governance framework: Establish a governance framework that defines roles, responsibilities, and decision-making processes to ensure that projects are managed effectively and efficiently.
- Monitor progress: Regularly monitor project progress to ensure that projects are on track, and adjust plans as necessary to ensure project success.
Project Portfolio Management is a critical framework that enables IT leaders to manage multiple projects effectively. By integrating PPM with IT Service Management – or using a product like TeamDynamix that has both on a single platform – IT leaders can enhance its effectiveness and align IT projects with the organization’s strategic goals.
Following best practices such as aligning projects with strategic goals, using data-driven decision-making, establishing a governance framework and monitoring progress can ensure that projects are managed effectively and efficiently.
Prior to using TeamDynamix for project management, the team at Kern Family Health Care, a Medi-Cal managed care health plan serving residents of Kern County, California, would maintain a shared spreadsheet with information about projects that were proposed, approved, and underway.
According to LaVonne Banks, director of Kern Health Systems’ enterprise project management office (EPMO), this process was inefficient and project managers did not have easy visibility into the status of projects. Looking to improve its project management process, Kern Health Systems implemented TeamDynamix in the summer of 2021.
With a simple and intuitive user interface, TeamDynamix makes it easy for project managers to evaluate project requests, approve and prioritize initiatives, assign resources and track and report on progress. TeamDynamix helps EPMO staff keep projects on course, establish clear expectations, and allocate resources more effectively.
“With TeamDynamix, I always have a source of truth on project data,” Banks observes.
Using TeamDynamix brings greater transparency to the project management process. It also saves Banks and her staff a great deal of time when they want to understand the status of projects and report this to organizational leaders.
“I love the platform’s reporting features,” she says. “They’re super easy to use. Being able to pull reports and quickly see real-time data is wonderful.”
Another key benefit of TeamDynamix is that it helps EPMO staff get out ahead of potential issues before they become full-blown problems. While some challenges are beyond the control of project managers, having greater insight makes it more likely that projects will be completed on time and under budget.
“We can quickly identify resource constraints and make adjustments when unexpected circumstances arise,” Banks says. “Because we can identify these issues earlier, we have a better chance of staying on top of resource management.”
Better transparency leads to more accountability and, ultimately, a higher success rate on projects.
When you consider that project portfolio management tools can cost several times as much for similar features and functionality, “the value of TeamDynamix is incomparable,” Banks concludes.