Project Portfolio Management: A View From The Management Trenches

9.3. THE PEOPLE FOUNDATION

You can have great processes, you can have great technology but you still need people to be engaged and empowered for success. One of the most obvious places to start with the foundation is with the identification of a sponsor and the related stakeholders. No doubt, these are important to the foundation, but the people who will be impacted by the initiative—those who are the project managers, those who are the providers of information and data, those who are affected by the decisions made as a result of the data, process, and technology—are in many cases equally important, if not more so. As has been highlighted throughout the preceding chapters, implementing a PPM initiative should not be taken on lightly and will likely impact many aspects of the organization—how it functions and the people who perform within it. PPM is not as easy as many portray it to be.

Foundational Principle Engaged and empowered people are keys to PPM success.

The players that typically make up the people foundation are the decision board or senior leadership, the sponsor, the stakeholders, the project leader, the project team, and the people impacted by the initiative.

These are the typical people players for implementing PPM. The people players change or evolve when the implementation ends and the PPM function takes its place operationally. As PPM moves to an operational state, the players typically evolve to a PPM leader at the vice president or director level, the portfolio ...