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Guest post by Ian Needs, Marketing Manager for KeyedIn Solutions
If your project management has no formalised frameworks, your business may well be losing money.
Standardisation and consistent application of project management methods, processes and technologies is a key factor in business success.
Project portfolio management (PPM) software provides a centralised dashboard for the meta-management and analysis of multiple projects, so that your project management team works within clear guidelines that design projects to succeed.
Issues Faced by Businesses
If your business manages multiple projects and resources, you may find PPM software helps you to align and streamline your projects.
When project staff work independently without any formal PPM structure, their unstandardized approaches will directly influence the progress and success of individual projects. In some organisations that might be a benefit, but in others it leads to unpredictable performance and non-comparable measurements of key performance indicators.
If you’ve found yourself:
- struggling to analyse performance across projects due to a lack of comparable data
- being forced to make project management decisions without complete information
- suffering the ignorance of stakeholders due to a lack of consistent, engaging communication
- worrying about the practicality of your pipeline management decisions
- wishing for more integrated information on overall portfolio viability
…then it may be time to explore PPM software.
What PPM Software Can do for Your Business
Most professional PPM solutions support the management of project scope, time, cost, procurement, integration, resources, communications, quality and risk.
A good PPM application lets you track and manage projects seamlessly, applying time-saving templates, scenario models and workflows. You’ll be able to take a long-term overview of all projects –past, current and future—to ensure that everyone’s efforts and resources are aligned toward your organisation’s strategic goals.
Some PPM software provides a real-time view, while other options are dependent on scheduled data refreshment. Real-time data is invaluable to its end users: your project managers, resource managers and executives will all benefit from timely insights into resource demand, capability and project delivery.
Who Doesn’t Need This?
If you’re running a very limited number of projects, PPM software is perhaps not an essential for your business. However, it’s a nice-to-have that may become increasingly useful as your project portfolio evolves.
Similarly, if your budget is limited then you may debate the value of PPM software. In a down economy, many businesses do without an automated PPM solution, but this often leads to inefficiency and a reduced ROI. Different organisations have different project portfolio management requirements, but most can benefit from clearer oversight of programmes and projects.
Rather than buying a licence for software that will only be partially rolled-out, it makes more sense for businesses with lower budgets to use easily scalable Software-as-a-Service project portfolio management solutions. PPM in the cloud offers a great deal of flexibility as well as location-independent access to information.
If you think it might be time you got project portfolio management software for your business, consider the numbers, types, and hierarchies of the projects you currently manage. What you’re looking for is a solution that suits your current portfolio and management requirements, so that you can improve your business efficiency without a long and complex implementation phase.
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For more resources, see the Library topic Project Management.
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Ian Needs is Marketing Manager for KeyedIn Solutions, provider of the KeyedIn projects project portfolio management software package.
