The aim of Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is to put you in control of your project investment so that you can realise value from people's ideas, in line with your business strategy and plan.

Role of software

Practical experience has taught us that realising strategic value from people's ideas without wasting investment requires much more than just an 'out-of-the-box' PPM software application.

Capturing the right information, in the right amount, at the right time - and applying intellectual input, insight and human judgement within a structured end-to-end process are all critical for success.

Organisations travelling the application software route have often quit in desperation after investing significant time and money, finding out that the only place that the application works is on the computer.

Building the foundations

PPM introduces new concepts, disciplines and responsibilities to the business at executive and leadership team level as well as within the change management function. When considering the introduction of software tools its critical to get your management processes right first.

The Verdandi approach uses a proven process framework and simple MS tools to quickly tailor a working solution that will precisely meet your organisation's needs. Implementation is organised in logical stages, to enable you to gain the necessary understanding and buy-in, skill your people and prove the benefits as you go. When people have a clear understanding of processes and requirements, software features are much easier to evaluate and compare.

Please contact us to discuss your requiremnets.

The whole process

Project Portfolio Management is just one dimension of the end-to-end business process needed to enable an organisation's executives to financially control ideas from inception through to the realisation of financial and non-financial benefits.

In our experience, a subtle blend of portfolio management, benefit management and change governance together enable the effective financial management of ideas and realisation of benefits in line with the strategy, business plan and target operating model.

Our approach

Our approach involves pursuing a rational and clearly defined process of rigour and vigour - 'light-touch but not soft-touch' - to ensure benefits are adequately planned, the investment effectively governed and the value realised.

Engaging the business

Critical to success is an early and active engagement between the people with ideas who understand your business and facilitators who understand your current processes, systems and target operating model.

Facilitators work with business owners to ensure essential conceptual design work is undertaken, and core information critical to commercial decision-making captured. This is presented as a 'Bid' for investment to the panel responsible for delivering the agreed strategy and sanctioning expenditure.

Filter low value ideas

'No hoper' initiatives are filtered out before any significant investment is made, minimising the risk of wasted investment.

Simple initiatives are diverted to business-as-usual to be handled through continual improvement.

By the time that a computer's processing power is needed, there are a relatively few, complex transactions that need to be assessed.

Consistent assessment

At the heart of Verdandi's offering is a simple and effective MS Excel tool, used to quickly:

Consistent measurement of ideas ensures relative worth is established and that the investment appraisal for each idea is presented in a uniform format.

Advance high value ideas

Information is accumulated into a simple database to enable the production of a variety of graphical representations. This enables assessment of internal and external value, viability, and affordability in line with organisation's strategic aspirations.

Intelligent analysis and comparison between the opportunities and risks presented by higher value ideas, from different commercial perspectives enables a balanced and blended change portfolio to be formulated, and final selection and prioritisation of value generating projects.

Simple tools

Because we use tools built using only standard MS Office products there are no complex IT platform barriers, flexibility issues or expensive maintenance contracts to consider.

Realising value

Financial and non-financial benefits are together referred to as value - and 'Value Management' is the term we use to describe the end-to-end business process. Ensuring value is realised requires:

Verdandi's services

Value Management can be implemented in your organisation as a business process with full transfer of skills to your people.

Alternatively, we can provide a project portfolio analysis service where Project Portfolio Management operates as a standalone process. For example, if you wish to have the commercial value of your current project portfolio validated or you are embarking on a large-scale transformation programme and want to establish the strategic contribution and potential value before investing. We will work for you and with you to analyse and report on your portfolio.

We offer a no-commitment demonstration and trial of this on your project portfolio.

Please contact us to discuss your specific needs.

The bigger picture

Value Management is just one of the five capabilities needed to make change management work effectively in an organisation.

The Strategic Vision is a context sensitive schema derived from the organisation's strategy and target operating model. This can be created using Strategy Accelerator.

Value Management and Resource Management combine to handle the 'should we' and 'could-we' aspects of change planning. Project Management and Programme Management handle the micro and macro aspects of change delivery.

If you wish to find out more about Value Management or trial it on your existing projects or new ideas then please contact us.