Why do companies invest in enterprise project offices, portfolio and programme offices and integrated project offices (EPOs, POs and IPOs), hereafter referred to as "EPI Offices"?
This rapid rate of changes in the IT industry and the business marketplace has created enormous strain on existing organisational resources, be it time, money, staff or materials.
Project management has been identified as one of the several workable solutions to making better use of existing resources, by getting work to flow horizontally as well as vertically within a company.
Therefore, must portfolio, programme and project management (PPPM) keep up with the industry's challenges and should all organisations review or to revisit their internal staff and external vendors?
Successful PPPM goes beyond maintaining realistic expectation levels and completing projects within budget, scope, time and resource constraints. Today the need to train, facilitate and to participate in high performing project teams requires a new application of team collaboration; clear and elevating project goals setting; high performance and quality standards and a culture of cross-functional and self-direction, if companies of the future would like to survive in a world of management and succeeding by project.
A PPPM process created by the people brings a structured approach to the use of project management skills, tools, software and techniques in an organisation. This is especially important in today's business environment, where most project managers and project leaders need to deliver higher quality output faster, with fewer resources, and very often with newly-formed cross-functional teams.
The challenge of today's PPPM stakeholders is to weave a web of new and improved project management practices; a web that is simple enough that we can all understand it and use it to the benefit of planning, organising and controlling all projects that will meet the objectives of business within the constraints of time, cost and performance.
As most projects use staff members from both technology and the respective business divisions, it is also of critical importance that cross-utilisation of resources from the business environments and other support functions be managed effectively.
Project management, therefore, requires synergy between business units and the ideal is a matrix management environment where technical and business participants develop common project and business goals.
In order to facilitate the introduction, implementation and development on a uniform, dynamic, culture and people-oriented project management discipline, it is essential to ensure the benefits of a professional PPPM web is spun within your organisation.
With the above-mentioned ever-increasing pace of demand and change, huge technology advances and fierce global competition, companies are forced to become more efficient. PPPM's main advantage in this fast-changing world is its logic and simplicity to understand. The nature of PPPM services provides the ideal environment for the elevation of their project management business to enhance and increase existing services to their current and future client base.
PPPM in any company is mainly focused on mutual support for training, mentorship and EPI Offices services, tools and methodology implementation management skills.
PPPM includes a dynamic analysis and reporting capability available through the software programs provided within this space. This capability enables a systematic, automated means of applying project alignment, risk, value plot and financial worth assessments.
PPPM solutions include the automation and enabling of your current processes, methodologies, procedures and templates to standardise on delivery across the organisation.
Pieter Meyer's comment on the above opinion: "We all know that PPPM is a must in any organisation that performs multiple projects and needs to provide validated and trusted management information, but must be supported by formal governance with proper enabling tools within the 'EPI Offices' as an integrated value propositions services to the organisation, in participation with outsource vendors who are in many cases responsible for the delivery of the projects.
"More to follow to debate and share within the EPI space, such as specific governance and ownership regarding people, processes and products," says Pieter.
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