Programme management has evolved over the past 10 years but still has room for improvement. While the use of portfolio management and benefits tracking has increased, many organizations do not use these techniques fully or allow political support to outweigh project viability. Speakers discussed how benefits realization, governance, and a focus on people aspects have improved but are still challenges. The field continues to mature with growing guidance resources and recognition that leadership must guide change management for success.

1. Is programme management
delivering on its promise:
ten years on?
Paul Rayner Memorial Webinar
26th March 2014

2. Meet the Authors …
Contributors Title
John Chapman Delivering value through Benefits
Adrian Pyne People is difficult …
Geof Leigh Evolution of Governance
Geoff Reiss Has portfolio management come of age?
Merv Wyeth Chair, Programme Management SIG

3. Handbook of ProgM
 Authoritative guidance, advice and templates
 Detailed description of entire ProgM
management process together with
supporting infrastructure
 ProgM Maturity Model
 Benchmarking tool covering ten key
processes

4. Quick Poll 1

5. Paul Rayner
 Contributed a great deal as founder
member of the Gower Handbook of
Programme Management author team
 He always sought to evolve
programme management
 Keen cyclist
 Sadly died on 1st August 2011

6. Delivering Value through Benefits
John will provide commentary on the levels of
maturity in benefits management that he
experiences now as opposed to when the
Handbook was written
John Chapman
Programme Director
Touchstone Energy
www.TouchstoneEnergy.co.uk

7. Quick Poll 2

8. Does your organisation
actively track actual
programme benefits against
expected benefits?
Quick Poll 3

9. Projects were focused on:
 The technology
 The people resources
 The software solutions
 The time-line for delivery
 There was little focus on the
benefits to be delivered

10. The Handbook emphasised (1)
 Benefits come from system usage,
not installing the system
 Projects create deliverables aka
outputs
 (We bake the cake, not eat it!)

11. The Handbook emphasised (2)
 Programmes should create capabilities
that enable benefits to be delivered.
e.g. educate managers on what to do
with information, not just give them data
on the desktop
 Benefit management processes ensure
that capabilities are then realised into
benefits (don’t just build helicopters,
use them)

12. Benefits Management Schematic

13. Benefits Management
 The Programme Business Case
– There has to be a distinction
between Hard and Soft Benefits
– Focusing only on Hard Benefits
 Can limit the scope of delivery
 Many organisations are not
driven by financial imperatives

14. The wider Context
 Kaplan and Norton in their balanced scorecard
recognise four perspectives

15. So, what has changed?
 Organisational competencies in programme and
project delivery have grown
 As individuals have worked on projects they are
able to find ‘brain space’ to think about what the
change means to them
 There is recognition that IT systems are enablers
to help solve business problems; not the answer
to the problem

16. So, what else has changed?
 Directors and Managers now think
in terms of:
– Financial Benefits: Revenue & Cost
– Non-Financial Benefits: Decision
Making, Risk reduction, Employee
Motivation…

17. Anything else?
 Individuals ask when will they get the benefits:
– Pre-go live
– Go live
– After 6 months
– After 1 year …

18. Benefits Management Literature
 Reference material and assistance
 APM Benefits Management Specific Interest Group
 A search on Amazon shows many books available

19. People is Difficult ...
Projects depend on how people behave, but our
profession is obsessed with Process and Technology.
The PEOPLE stuff is difficult. In this session on :
Leadership, culture and stakeholders, Adrian will
examine why this is, with strategies for dealing with this
Cinderella subject.
Adrian has more than 25 years in Change & project /
programme /portfolio management and capability
development. Adrian has chaired APM’s ProgM SIG,
is a co-author, a frequent speaker and visiting lecturer,
is RPP certified and an RPP Assessor.

20. The Dark Ages - history
 Evolution and optimism
 30 years of continuous incremental
development of standards
 And yet success rates are perhaps
incrementally better
Do the
other
Do
that
Do
this
 Best Practice is still dominated by
PROCESS
 TECHNOLOGY should have helped
and yet …
What is missing, or left to try?

21. The Dark Ages – the barriers
 Manufacturing vs. projects: wastage
 Failing to Mature
 Maturity not sustained
 Misunderstanding
 Mistakes and Mistiming
The best performing organisations have an X factor

22. The Poor Relation

23. The Poor Relation
 The biggest barrier is … people
 Fear of Change
 No organisation culture for change
 Leaders do not “get” change
– nor projects
 Change competes with Business As
Usual
Process Tools

24. A Ray of Hope
 Growing recognition
– APM’s focus on Leadership, Professionalism & Ethics
– Ryan Air customer service change
– NAO reports citing behaviour as major factor in major failures
– Kotter’s report on Kodak bankruptcy
 A road not yet travelled
– lack of agile thinking in APM
– People aspects still fragmented

25. A Beacon of Hope
 BAA: Intelligent Client for Heathrow re-development
 Global technology company: client-supplier
collaboration
 Major Projects Leadership Academy
 Blogging on behavioural factors
 Massive interest in behavioural events
And the next 10 years?

26. Evolution of Governance
Best practice guidance hasn’t changed substantially in the
last 30 years. IT promised to revolutionise governance but
it didn’t happen. It is now getting better. So what is
different? People, culture and senior management have
finally realised that they must play an active role to make
change successful. Geof will explore this theme from his
personal experience.
Geof has been involved with managing change since
the early 1970’s with experience in government, IT,
insurance, the media and banking.
He is an author of MSP and the new P3M3.

27. In the beginning
 Started in the mid 1970’s
 Coordinating a £100m p.a. capital regeneration portfolio
 Lots of data but limited computing power
 You would only put something in place if you were sure it
would actually be used
 Even then you had to keep it simple and obvious
It worked, governance was simple but effective

28. What happened next!
 We got lots of computers
 We got best practice
 IT people started driving business change
 Executives disconnected
 Projects and programmes were left to fend
for themselves
A typical quote, “we’ve appointed good project managers and given them
the tools. If it doesn’t work it’s their fault, sack them!”

29. Governance 10 years ago
 Board of Directors became Executive
Teams and then Leadership Teams but
with little proper leadership
 Initiatives were ad hoc; briefs thrown over
the wall
 Mission impossible - wrong things done
the wrong way!
 Rushed and patched together to try to
meet ‘deadlines’
 Loads of money wasted
 More best practice and yet more powerful
PPM software!
As one experienced user of best practice once said to me, “you have got
to bring your brain along as well!”

30. What has changed?
 Companies Act 2006 and the financial crash, directors have had
to up their game
 Times are tougher, be smarter or disappear, its no longer
practical to throw money at it when it all goes wrong
 Many of the ‘easier’ projects have been done, IT is everywhere.
There is now more difficult more uncertain change to manage
 P3M3 benchmarking is widely used, organisations know what
good looks like, and want to be seen to be better than their
competitors
 Leaders are starting to understand what leadership really is
 Sponsors are realising there is more to the role than getting
their latest bright idea started.
P3M governance best practice guidance hasn’t changed radically over the
last 10 years - so what is making it work better now?

31. The story line (1)
Executives in their ivory
towers, who knew stuff,
went out into the
‘factory’ but … they
were rarely there
Briefs were despatched
to already overworked
programme and project
managers

32. The story line (2)
Some smart Execs
realised things were
not good over the
wall …
so they started to
look at what was
going on in the
‘factory’

33. The story line (3)
These smart Execs
having looked on the
other side of the wall
started to think …
maybe there is more I
should be doing in the
‘factory’

34. The story line (4)
Today the really smart
Execs are in the
‘factory’ understanding,
guiding and supporting
when needed
They know that good
governance is much
more than just making
decisions

35. . . . and today?
 Sponsors are beginning to understand that they have
be involved throughout the change cycle
 There are proper change teams; sponsor, deliverer
and customer are all working together
 Governance is becoming more than making decisions;
directing, supporting, sharing the pain and the gain
 Reporting is smart, one page, governance requires
real understanding.

36. My conclusion
 Best practice guidance
 Tools
 Good information
 Are all important for good governance
 But … only people behaving in the
right way can make it work well!

37. Has Portfolio Management come
of age?
Geoff will discuss the developments in portfolio
management but expresses concern that a significant
percentage of new projects are approved due to the
support of a senior manager rather than the real value of
the initiative.
Geoff Reiss is an Honorary Fellow of the APM & Honorary
President of ProgM. He has a master’s degree in project
management and sat on the review panels of most
versions of the UK government’s publication on this topic:
Managing Successful Programs.

38.  Portfolio management is the selection, prioritisation and
control of an organisation’s projects and programmes in
line with its strategic objectives. APM BoK 6
 The centralized management of one or more portfolios,
which includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing,
managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other
related work, to achieve specific strategic business
objectives and capacity to deliver. PMBOK 4th Edition
Definitions

39. Quick Poll 4

40. Gartner & Forrester Studies
2001/2003
Do Programmes Deliver Benefits?
Do companies measure benefits?
yes
Do some
no
deliver
benefit
25%
deliver no
benefit
75%
Forrester: Stressing that
“[Programme] Prioritisation tops
the list of CIO’s challenges”

41. ProgM / APM Survey (Summer 2009)

42. PwC Survey (1)
 Do organisations use Portfolio Management?
 Those that do use it are using it more fully, and
getting better results

43. PwC Survey (2)
Key Finding
Organisations that adopt portfolio
management can experience greater
satisfaction in their project performance

44. Activity has Increased
 Case Study (Project Magazine, Feb 14) pp.30-32
 Portfolio SIG
 Portfolio tools marketplace

45. On the other hand:
 Significant number of organisations do
not recognise Portfolio Management
 Many ‘Pet’ Projects
 Senior support for an idea is sometimes
more important that its viability?

46. Conclusion
In the last 10 years …
 Significant Increase in use of Portfolio
Management
 More Tools and Processes have emerged
 Better use of the techniques is being made
 However … there is room for improvement

47. Quick Poll 5

48. Thank you for
attending
Q & A