Being 'on budget' is not a primary measure of success. Delivering the optimum net value is success. The TOP Value Equation makes optimization possible
How to powerfully, usefully and effectively measure each projects' strategic contribution.
Invisible driver of excessive costs Your organization has a range of capabilities - areas where it is particularly strong and effective that deliver the organization’s services and determine its competitiveness.
To understand project portfolio management you need to understand when you need a Portfolio Office
With this 'black hole' you can lose control of your project and what you're trying to achieve. Yet the TOP Value Equation can fill this hole.
Many organizations struggle with how to prioritize their projects - how to objectively select the highest priority projects that are strategically relevant, worthwhile, doable and which are required to be done now. Yet project prioritisation is really quite simple.
Research has shown that more projects fail due to poor project governance than poor project management.
What you don't know can be high risk and high cost to you personally and to your organization.
In operational day-to-day management we discourage thinking. We have repeatable processes and extensive automation to predefine how things are done.
TOP equips the business to define its true needs and then govern the project to successfully deliver the business value
Critical Success Factors are prerequisites to the success of the project, not the most important measures of success.
If you see value delivery as an extension of project delivery you will severely compromise the business value delivered, as we explain
The definition of your desired business outcomes is the 'holy grail 'of projects that every manager needs to understand.
Your benefits' value is controlled by your scope and portfolio management processes
Strategic growth is too often undermined by a lack of value delivery processes. Five in particular that can be easily put in place.
Here are "28 ways to lose $1 million a day”, lose value and destroy capital — check how many are in your organization
You need to ensure your project health check actually diagnoses your project's health. Most don't, they only conduct a superficial 'check-up'
Few are "joining the dots" to understand that the orthodox way we approach and deliver projects is incomplete. Some of the "dots" are missing, some are not working, and some are actually destroying value.
You must document your organization's current state in detail as everything you do today has to be either eliminated or accommodated in the future.
Project Governance has been neglected yet a governance team can destroy more value in five minutes than a project team can destroy in five weeks. Poorly understood, poorly supported and poorly executed it is not surprising that more projects fail due to poor project governance than poor project management. Yet while we invest millions in project management we invest next to nothing in project governance.
When should you call out a failing project to ensure you don't waste time, effort and money?
How to manage the trade-offs between different quality and cost dimensions on projects
The use of 'sliders' as quality controls can cause projects to be compromised at the outset - which is totally unnecessary and very wasteful.
The idea of projects not being responsible for benefits is false and needs to be rejected.
Projects do not just exist to solve problems, they are commissioned to deliver the business benefits and value.
Managing the 'iron triangle' is not the key control, you need to manage scope and value to get the benefits you expect.
The focus of project delivery is cost, of business owners is value, and executive management is ROI, but they all must work together to succeed.
Project cost overruns can cause projects to go over 100% over budget, thereby destroying value. Find out why
If you reduce the level of unnecessary project rework you can reduce the project delivery costs by 15%-20%
High project failure rates generate a 15% 'tax' on the total cost of projects
Every day your project is delayed, you lose that day's value, permanently. Time is money. You need an active and effective value delivery approach.
Value loss from poor scope management comes in two forms – missed value and destroyed value. When changing, project scope can eliminate some or all of the project's value, this needs to be carefully managed by the governance team.
Own goals? On-time/on a budget are measures of project efficiency, not business value. Until we take a business perspective, we'll continue to disappoint our business partners.
Looking the wrong way
The organization needs to vouch that their projects are not ‘frozen’ before they can be assured it will deliver real value to the business.
Are Project Managers a ‘commodity’?
Two critical questions to ask your consultants
A disaster in flight
Delivering a project does not ensure the delivery of the business outcomes
Critical Insights (11) If you mention the word “Scope” to most people around projects, the first word they think of is “control”. As a result too often projects are scoped too tightly from the outset as part of this ‘control’ mentality, missing large areas of real value because of how the scope is defined.
TOPics
- Benefits Management (29)
- Business Case (24)
- Business Simplification (5)
- Capability Development (38)
- Capital Investment (24)
- Change Management (17)
- Consultants (1)
- Costs and Waste (16)
- Engineered Thinking/Ideas/Innovation (8)
- Fifteen Critical Insights (15)
- Idea / Project Initiation (3)
- Mental Models, Beliefs and Myths (18)
- Outcomes Thinking (10)
- Path Dependency (10)
- Prioritization (13)
- Process Management (11)
- Productivity Improvement (7)
- Program / Project delivery (40)
- Project Controls (52)
- Project Governance (90)
- Project Management (4)
- Project Success (46)
- Project Validation (2)
- Risk Management (5)
- Scope Management (5)
- Standards/Frameworks/Methods (14)
- Strategic Project Portfolio Management (16)
- Strategy Execution (40)
- The TOP Four Lenses (1)
- TOP compared to orthodox approaches (7)
- Value Delivery (83)
- Value Equation (60)