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Quick Take: Emerging technologies can make your products and services obsolete Digital Transformation (DX) means using current technologies to rework an organization’s products, processes, and strategies The biggest trends driving Digital Transformation are: Mobile technologies Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Internet of Things Cloud Computing You can utilize Project Portfolio Management (PPM) best practices to support your Digital Transformation goals and increase the chances of successfully leveraging not only the current new paradigms but future changes as well We Live in a Rapidly Advancing Technological Landscape We’re sure you understand how quickly technology is changing. What was impossible last year becomes commonplace this year. For example, let’s look at one fast-growing technology: the Internet of Things (IoT): Worldwide technology spending on IoT is forecasted to attain a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 13.6% by 2022 Cellular IoT connections will reach $3.5 billion in 2023, with a CAGR of 30% With mass adoption of 5G still a few years away, the market for IoT middleware will rise from $7.71B in 2019, to USD 22.36B by 2025, a CAGR of 19.72% Even if your organization is not in the IoT/5G space, chances are good that the availability of these evolving technologies will offer opportunities for organizations that shouldn’t be ignored. Like it or not, your organization must adapt to changing market forces. You must anticipate how emerging technologies could make your products and services obsolete. Embracing Digital Transformation is necessary for any business, nonprofit, or institution that seeks to survive into the future. Evolve or become extinct. This post focuses on the impact of global changes within the IT department, specifically the Project Portfolio Management process (PPM). What is Digital Transformation? Digital Transformation (DX) is the reworking of the products, processes, and strategies within an organization to leverage current technologies. Implementing DX requires the examination and reinvention of most, if not all, areas within an organization, from supply chain and workflow to employee skill sets and board-level discussions, to customer interactions and stakeholder value. Effectively implementing a Digital Transformation strategy enables an organization to better survive and compete as technology evolves in a constantly changing economic landscape. According to the MIT Center for Digital Business companies that have embraced digital transformation are 26% more profitable than their average industry competitors and enjoy a 12% higher market valuation. Gartner characterizes “top-performing businesses” as those that have already embarked on digital transformations or where digitization is built into their business model. What is Driving DX and What is its Impact? Wikipedia defines Digital Transformation as the adoption of digital technology to transform services or businesses, by replacing non-digital or manual processes with digital processes or replacing older digital technology with newer digital technology. The major forces currently driving Digital Transformation evolution are: Mobile technologies Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning Internet of Things Cloud Computing These technologies have drastically changed how quickly customers can get information, thus altering their expectations of the quality of products and services from businesses and other organizations with whom they interact. Similarly, this same collection of digital tools has changed what employees and stakeholders (business partners and investors) expect from organizations. Why Do I Need to Take Action? The new digital normal has led to mounting pressure to deliver faster, better, cheaper on an increasing number of DX-focused initiatives as organizations scramble to maintain their competitive positioning. To help their companies compete in the new digital marketplace, CIOs are tasked with developing an increasing number of customer-facing applications and nimble platforms. At the same time, Worldwide IT spending is projected to total $4.1 trillion in 2021, an increase of 8.4% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner. Gartner also says the source of funds for new digital business initiatives will more frequently come from business departments outside IT and charged as a cost of revenue or cost of goods sold (COGS). Despite the potential growth in funding, CIOs are being asked to do more with less—and a lot of that “less” is going to maintain the status quo, not to digital transformation. As a result, IT resources are scarcer than ever. How Will This Benefit My Organization? Without a robust PPM methodology, organizations risk overwhelming their IT departments by investing in the wrong projects, failing to transform the business, and ultimately falling behind the competition or going out of business. Utilizing PPM best practices to support your Digital Transformation goals increases the chances of successfully leveraging the new paradigm by ensuring that your IT department is aligned with your corporate strategy. Project Portfolio Management Action Plan for DX The preceding may have increased your anxiety, but rest assured: There are ways your organization can use Project Portfolio Management to survive, and even thrive during the DX transformation. Here are three key areas of the Project Portfolio Management process to consider to ensure your DX strategy is successful without sacrificing delivery of ongoing projects. Project Selection Digital Transformation affects all areas of an organization, from sales and marketing to supply chain to management to HR. But its impact will probably be the biggest on your organization’s IT department. DX is likely to produce more IT resource requests from more stakeholders than ever before. Identifying which initiatives to select, approve, and fund remains a cornerstone of PPM best practices and is of paramount importance for managing DX initiatives. Project selection and prioritization will become even more important for DX projects. Key questions to challenge your current PPM process regarding growth in project requests include the following: Does our project selection process support corporate guidelines concerning Transparency and Governance? Who can request a project? What is the method by which requests are submitted? What information is gathered during the submission process? How is this information stored? Do we have quantitative measures in place to select DX initiatives? How do we communicate when and why projects are/are not approved? Project Management Once the DX initiatives aligning with the portfolio goals and/or corporate strategy have been identified the next step is to successfully

Quick Take: The way you and your team approach decision-making can affect team cohesion as well as the quality of the decision Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software can provide the facts to support decision-making When making decisions with a team choose inquiring over advocating Follow a structured inquiry process rather than an advocacy process Vital project information from your PPM helps ground your deliberations in reality If you’re the leader, consider removing yourself from the decision-making process Decisions, decisions, decisions… Executives tend to think of decision-making as an event that happens at one moment in time.  But a decision within an organization is a process. Do you have a good decision-making process in your organization? Or, probably more importantly, within your team? Many organizations are making decisions without fully understanding the data at their fingertips. “Information reported on during a project’s life-cycle is not effectively analyzed against portfolio performance and consequently the impacts of decisions on the bottom line are often not fully understood,” states KPMG in a recent Project Management Survey. This lack of understanding of decisions’ impact of on the organization ramps up the pressure for decision-making to be better, faster, and more accurate. This is especially apparent in organizations operating in disrupted and rapidly changing landscapes, dominated by challenges of speed of integration. Here are some pointers to consider as you develop a stronger approach to decision-making. Included are methods for making data from your Project Portfolio Management solution actionable and integrating data-driven insights into a transparent, inquiry-based decision process. Abandon the Advocacy Process Decision-makers and influencers often use what is called the Advocacy Process, a technique used to represent, promote, or defend an interest or recommendation. The team gets together, team members throw out ideas, and then advocate for their ideas, defending them from the rest of the group. This process can embroil your team members in a passionate contest, pitching emotionally charged opinions  and perhaps resulting in an acrimonious, and perhaps hurtful, contest. Sometimes, groups within your organization will battle for their point of view or their portion of the budget to the point of gridlock. If everyone wants to plant their flag on something they can call their own, conflict can flare and become personal. While it’s good to ask your team for their ideas and opinions, advocacy can become gridlock. Embrace the Inquiry Process Rather than asking the team to brainstorm, try the Inquiry Process. In this process, team members consider a variety of options through an open exchange of fact-based ideas. They join together to analyze ideas and strive for consensus. This approach is more likely to lead to an agreement on the best course of action than plowing ahead with an emotional battle. The Inquiry Process is an idea-exchange method of decision-making. While debate and conflict during this process can be intense, it is never personal. Randy Hirokawa’s functional theory holds that groups are more likely to make better decisions when they follow structured inquiry processes in which they are encouraged to: First thoroughly understand the problem, understanding the nature, severity, causes and consequences of the issue Establish evaluation criteria by setting agreed-upon standards for an acceptable solution Develop a range of alternatives that are realistic, acceptable and feasible Assess the positive consequences of each alternative by developing in the team an awareness of and a focus on the merits of each option Assess the negative consequences of each alternative by considering the potential disadvantages of each option How a PPM Solution Supports Inquiry Process Because it is in our nature as humans to become emotionally invested in our projects, we champion our projects and advocate for support without always understanding the bottom-line. “I built this thing and it’s my baby!” is often the mindset. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI®), Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the “centralized management of one or more portfolios that enable executive management to meet organizational goals and objectives through efficient decision making on portfolios, projects, programs and operations.” Project Portfolio Management can improve the inquiry process by providing information, visibility, and insight into the decisions you will make about projects in your organization. The rich nature of the data found in PPM software solutions makes it easier to ground your team’s decisions in fact. Your team can get answers from PPM such as, “Have we ever faced this problem before? What did we do then?” Or “What is the current practice across the organization for solving problems of this type?” Or even “What metrics can we use to prefer Solution A over Solution B?” Having fact-based discussions around possible solutions enables teams to base their deliberations in the reality of your organization and the current problem that needs solving. Understand Vital Project Information Any decision that revolves around a project can be improved by using vital project information derived from the Project Portfolio Management software solution. After all, project managers need to live in the real world. So, when making decisions about moving ahead with a project or reallocating resources, you must deliberate in an unbiased way using facts from your PPM. The Projectric PPM solution enhances your understanding of vital project information by determining: Priority of the project for the organization: Projectric helps by performing project prioritization and scoring Who is working on the project and their impact: Projectric quickly and easily helps you understand the resources available to allocate to a project Whether the project is on track and on budget: Projectric can provide the real-time reporting you need to understand where your project stands PPM directly supports fact-based inquiry, which leads to Data Driven Decision (DDD) making. More Suggestions for Fact-Based Inquiry If you are the ultimate decision maker on a certain subject, consider removing yourself from deliberations. Instead, review your team’s findings and discussions, and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses discussed. Cyrus The Great, the founder of the Persian Empire, was said to have praised “diversity in counsel, unity in command.” Consider your team’s input and count a PPM

Quick Take: Use this process for any kind of software: Ask yourself why to you need the software and make a list Create a list of features that will answer the “whys” Based on the feature list, research software providers Select your top five Do a side-by-side weighted comparison to rank providers Use a Criteria-Based Assessment to Evaluate Software Solutions Projectric recommends a five-step criteria-based assessment for evaluating any software solution. We’ll use the Projectric Project Portfolio Management (PPM) software solution as an example. The first step is to determine organizational needs that a software solution could meet. 1) Ask yourself “Why Do We Need PPM?” Many organizations evaluating Project Portfolio Management software are seeking to: Easily select the right projects Organize projects Track the budget and health of projects Communicate about projects Ensure that solutions are sustainable, maintainable, and usable Make sure you understand your organization’s needs thoroughly before moving to the next step. 2) Decide which features you absolutely need in your solution Based on your “Why” list, describe the software functions you require to fulfill your goals. Create a list of features that you can use to check prospective software for fitness. You may want to establish a hierarchy of needs that you can use in a later step to score software candidates. The Software Sustainability Institute has a good white paper on this process. For our PPM exercise, let’s use these commonly desired PPM features: Project Scoring (out-of-the-box) Responsive Notification System Project Health Tracker Data Security Features Automatic Updating Changes Unlimited Users Resource Scheduling Issue Tracking Analytics The intent of this stage is to identify your must-have and nice-to-have features. To do this, you should do a ranking exercise to produce a final list. 3) Select your PPM software provider candidates The next step is to canvas your industry to select software solutions that meet the criteria you have established. In this phase, you’ll want to determine if candidates are likely to be long-term partners. You may want to do online searches, or ask your peer organizations, or solicit recommendations from industry analysts. 4) Do a side-by-side weighted comparison Rank the various prospective solutions against your list of must-have features. Using the rankings, eliminate the low performers until you have a short list of three to five contenders (the fewer the better). Now you can concentrate on your short list and can do a more intensive review and ranking to illuminate how providers stack up. See this sample comparison chart and legend.   You’ll want to take into account total cost of ownership including the upfront and hidden costs. You may also want to score RelevanceHow closely aligned with your problem space is the software being considered? Is the software made primarily for a particular industry or problem and if so, can it be made to work with your organization? EfficiencyYou may want to evaluate several demos of the software and the processes users will go through to achieve results. Effectiveness How likely will you be able to achieve your most important objectives? How easy is it for users to use the software? ImpactTry to forecast how the software will affect your current workflow and outcomes. Try to determine potential positive and negative effects. Will the software require substantial changes in the way your organization does things? SustainabilityHow sustainable is the solution? Could you see your organization using this software for the next 5, 10, or 20 years? The Decision From your final analysis, you should have enough data to make your final selection. We wish you the best of luck! If you’d like to evaluate Projectric’s solution, schedule a demo or contact us today to see how Projectric can illuminate your project portfolio.