Collaboration – The Key to Project Portfolio Management

In marketing, I encounter executives every day who “want” to fix their problems of poor front-end economic evaluation but lack the where-with-all to make it work.  In an ever-increasingly “money is precious” competitive environment, decision-makers absolutely must make the best value-based decisions for the survival of the company.  However, I continually hear from these same decision-makers what continues to plague their organization from hitting home runs is the proverbial “herding of the cats” culture within their organization.   Everyone is scurrying around making sure their own workload is taken care of each day, therefore, not realizing that collaboration is the key.

A single collaborative methodology where executives, finance, technical and marketing all make objective input to the economic front-end is where it starts.  The baggage of politics, silos and favoritism must be left at the door.  Sometimes, this new form of front-end collaboration needs to be taught.  People have forgotten what they learned in kindergarten is “how to play together”.

If the organization makes the strongest collaborative decision-analysis possible on the front end, then, they eliminate or significantly reduce the opportunity for “garbage in – garbage out”.  Selection of the most valuable projects becomes easier.  Balance between reward/risk starts to optimize returns.  Allocation of resources starts to happen in an objective way targeting overall value.