Ai visibility is essential in order to implement AgilePortfolio Management. One of the main concerns about moving to Agile methods is that sprint-style deliverables and shifting priorities inherent in Agile aren’t always compatible with traditional methods of project management or portfolio management. It is important to recognize one of the core principles of Agile PortfolioManagement: Centralize portfolio and project management, regardless of methodology.
Regardless of your methodology, centralize project and portfolio management
Let’s take a moment and discuss the extremely complex and demanding job that portfolio managers have to do. Project and portfolio managers are constantly under pressure to balance demands, resources, and strategic priorities in the digital economy. This allows them to deliver more, faster, and increase customer satisfaction. Gartner found that project managers (PMs), are under increasing pressure to respond faster and deliver better business results last year. They must have the information and visibility they need to make quick, informed decisions. This is where centralization comes in.
Why centralize?
Centralization allows your project manager office (PMO), to bring all projects into one portfolio, regardless of their type or approval workflow. This facilitates timely and efficient decision-making. A software development team might have been using Jira as an Agile development tool, but the infrastructure group may be running more traditional Waterfall projects. Ai and the PMO must somehow link both initiatives into a portfolio report for executives. This meant that the PMO had to coordinate many meetings, manual effort and phone calls with executives. Even basic functions like capacity planning, Ai, i.e. can we take on more work, became an operational nightmare. Agile Portfolio Management requires a solution that can centralize all projects into one reporting hub that provides visibility, comprehensive, timely reporting, and rollup to portfolio level. Portfolio and project managers can see in one place who is involved in a project, what tasks are currently in progress, and whether resources are being fully utilized.
Organizations also benefit from Agile Portfolio Management in another important way. Agile Portfolio Management allows leaders to be more deliberate in their project selection and ensures that their decisions align with their business goals. It also keeps a rolling backlog so that priorities can change. This reduces risk, maximizes resource use, and supports sound investment overall. Ofcourse, it also delivers greater business value and customersatisfaction.
An Agile PortfolioManagement approach can also include traditional Waterfall projects. This is useful for deliverables that require a linear process, or hybrid projects that combine Agile and traditional methods. In this case, and arguably more often than not, Agileis best suited at the portfolio level, even if some projects within are traditional.What truly matters is that information is centralized within the PMO, andportfolio leaders can collect data on all projects to drive effectivedecision-making, capacity planning and a project backlog.
This last benefit, backlog, is particularly important because it allows portfolio managersto keep the workpipeline stocked with ready-to run projects that fill in the value-sapping gaps that are common to non-centralized methods. It’s possible for PMs to not be aware that valuable resources are being held back by stalled deliverables, rather than flowing into new initiatives. Is that the Gartner article I mentioned a moment ago? Pr
