Executives and project team members often have very different perspectives on the current state of the project landscape. Individuals that are constrained to their own perspective can easily lose sight of the bigger picture. That leads to inefficiencies, misunderstandings, and conflicting goals.
But there is a simple solution: Ensure transparency, following the “Visualize the Portfolio for Everyone” principle!
The Power of Visualization
Humans are visual-oriented beings. Visual representations summarize complex information at a glance. For project portfolios, intuitive views like these are suitable:
- Project overviews: timelines, budgets, phases, and risks
- Portfolio heatmaps: resource utilization and capacities
- Progress views: Projects at a glance with traffic light status
- Financial reports: Costs, value contributions, and revenues of the entire portfolio.
Such visualizations create clarity and a common understanding among all stakeholders.
The Key to Alignment
However, consistent implementation of the visualization principle is often lacking. Common obstacles are:
- Access barriers: Only a few individuals have access to portfolio information.
- Media discontinuities: Different, unlinked tools for reporting/visualization purposes.
- Manual efforts: Compiling and preparing data costs a lot of time.
This is where you should start: Use modern, cloud-based solutions for your project portfolio management. This way, all stakeholders can conveniently access central, always up-to-date portal views from anywhere. Seamlessly integrate reporting and visualization views into existing platforms. Automate project reporting as much as you can.
And most importantly: Lower the access barrier! The easier and more user-friendly the access to project portfolio data, the better you can align all stakeholders, create common understanding and jointly drive strategy execution.
The Execution Excellence Manifesto shows further proven principles for successful project portfolio management.
