How Project and Portfolio Management Helps Mitigate Risk

What Is Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)?

With so many technical requirements and user demands to focus on in the IT landscape, Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) provides organizations with standardized processes for examining a project’s cost-benefits, mitigating its risk factors, and managing its delivery from inception to implementation efficiently, safely, and successfully.

Listen to our companion Podcast about Project and Portfolio Management. 

Why Use a PPM Solution

Organizations can coordinate potential and current IT projects effectively, delivering projects on schedule, on budget, and without overwhelming internal resources during the project lifecycle. Prior to starting any type of project, an organization must ask the following questions:

• Is there a clear plan in place outlining the project’s scope and strategic goals?
• What processes are set up to analyze its financial impact?
• What are the processes to determine the budget and schedule?
• Do you have access to the right resources to complete the project?
• Are there ways to assess the project’s strategic value?
• What is the risk if the project does not move forward?
• Is the proper stakeholder assigned?
• Is there an executive sponsor for the overall success of the project?
• A Reliable Decision-Making Playbook

Project Selection and Decision-making

PPM tools offer a coherent, transparent method to prepare, develop, and deliver a project, optimizing how operations stage and execute initiatives of different sizes and complexity. Leveraging a fully realized project management solution gives an organization the ability to analyze the project’s financial impact, its overall value to the organization, and assess the variety of components required for completion, informing stakeholders of the resources, time, and phases required from project inception to completion without sacrificing quality. It provides organizations the ability to analyze, track, and manage all ongoing projects with a tested, systematic methodology of determining the right investment decisions to achieve your organizational IT vision in an efficient manner.

PPM Benefits: The Right Staff on the Right Task

PPM’s true benefits are from a demand management perspective. For example, an organization has the requirement to refresh 50 computers, which requires five technicians. PPM software helps project managers and team members assign resources and manage tasks based on future needs, incorporating the employees’ talents, schedules, and current hours of availability. Once the organization is able to identify each individual’s availability, the system will prioritize who is available each day, and align their skillsets to specific individual tasks, taking into consideration the total estimated hours to complete a project while realizing how taxed the staff might be in relation to all other future commitments.

Business Needs and Strategic Objectives of PPM

PPM’s capabilities can effectively focus on projects outside of IT. From a strategic perspective, any project classified as a business need can be mapped, scored, and tracked using the same PPM solution. Whether looking to improve customer satisfaction, analyze potential purchases, evaluate the adoption rate of product functionality/features, weigh a significant operational change, or identify high-value priorities, organizations can define the requirements of their business needs more easily, designate resources based upon workload, and budget accordingly using forecasts based on business strategy and compatibility. This process also allows an organization to be proactive, detect changes, and perform risk management in advance, reducing overall risk exposure and the risks of financial impact. In addition, throughout the project’s lifecycle, organizations can monitor project status more accurately, determining what has been accomplished and what remains to be completed while ensuring the project remains on schedule and on budget.

Knowledgeable and Experienced Guidance

Flycast Partners has experience adapting to change rapidly and mitigating risk pro-actively. We have helped over 1,600 customers mature their service delivery capabilities with our robust and standardized Project Management services. With our trusted guidance, customers can establish a clear roadmap of business objectives and goals ensuring projects are delivered on budget and on time. At every stage of the engagement’s duration, our knowledgeable and motivated staff is available for support. Customers can access the right resources, receive consistent scheduling and status updates, and more efficiently navigate a complex project successfully with the assistance of a skilled consulting team focused on providing excellent customer service. Regardless of a project’s size or complexity, Flycast Partners offers the following Project Management services during the engagement:

• Oversee successful execution of multi-phase, multi-dimensional, and multi-resource Customer engagements
• Possess a thorough understanding of the requirements, scope, and definitions for each engagement
• Develop timeline estimates identifying and scheduling resources to meet and/or exceed Customer deadlines
• Secure exemplary technical resources for each engagement
• Proactively recognize Customer needs and apply mature conflict resolutions when/if necessary
• Manage potential risks and delivery quality
• Track performance and quality of project deliverables
• Ensure that project adheres to timeline
• Effectively communicate with project teams, customers, legal, sales, and internal SMEs

For a deeper dive into the project and portfolio management process, Flycast Partners is available to demo these technologies and explain further how this cost-conscious approach can help support project goals and overarching IT objectives, reducing or eliminating the challenges associated with mapping and managing a project from concept to reality.