Lean Portfolio Management promises enormous efficiency gains in strategy execution. But how do you get started in the first place? Here is a step-by-step guide for implementing the “Start Quickly” principle.
Review Your Capacities
The first step is to get an overview of all available capacities for project work. Determine how many person-days or full-time equivalents per required skill are planned for project work in your teams and departments. Tools like capacity planning in modern portfolio management systems can help you with this.
Define Project Key Data
Next, capture the essential key data for each ongoing and planned project:
- Project goals and expected benefits/revenue
- Planned milestones and completion date
- Required personnel resources per month by skill.
Visualize Your Project Portfolio
Now, transfer the capacity and project key data into a suitable tool – preferably a cloud-based Lean PPM solution. This gives you transparency at a glance over:
- Overall utilization and bottlenecks in the project portfolio
- Progress and stoplight status of individual initiatives
- Budget situation and expected profitability.
Start Improving Continuously
The best part is: You don’t have to wait for perfect data quality to get started. The key is in regular target/actual comparisons. So hold regular status meetings, e.g. every 2 or 4 weeks. Discuss deviations, initiate corrective actions, and gradually adjust the planning.
Immediately organize relief for overloaded resources. Free up project teams and those responsible from unnecessary reporting on a detailed level. This way, everyone works in a focused manner on actual completion – the key to successful strategy execution.
Take the first step now and start with Lean Portfolio Management! The Execution Excellence Manifesto explains all the details.
