4 Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Topics to Consider When Planning for 2022

When considering your project portfolio management (PPM) landscape, whether you currently have a PPM tool in place or not, you probably should still be planning ahead for a better year in 2022. 

In this quick article, we’ll highlight the four basic topics that you and your organization should be sure to consider in order to plan for the coming year: 1) Examine whether or not your organization even needs a PPM solution in place, 2) Project capacity, 3) Human resources, and 4) Budgeting. 

Does your organization need a PPM solution?

“Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is the centralized management of the processes, methods, and technologies used by project managers and project management offices (PMOs) to analyze and collectively manage current or proposed projects based on numerous key characteristics,” as defined in Wikipedia. 

What are those key characteristics? They vary from organization to organization but they usually include project sizes and budgets, user base, resource pool, technology, and maturity of the PM infrastructure in the organization.

Most organizations and technology leaders agree that even a modest investment in a project portfolio management solution can yield noticeable benefits – even significant returns in some cases of higher-dollar applications across the enterprise. Commonly conceived benefits of a project portfolio management solution implementation include:

• Prioritization for decision-making
• Faster project kickoffs and executions
• More accurate and planning and forecasting of investments in projects for the organization
• More optimized resource utilization

What is your project capacity?

When considering if your organization needs a PPM solution and what features you want, or need, you will want to look at your own perceived project landscape over the next few months or years ahead. How big are the projects in terms of staffing, budgets, and technology? What are your reporting demands and needs? How big is your resource pool in your PM infrastructure? Do you want a PPM solution that will help you manage the resources and overall utilization? It’s quite likely since resource management across many projects in a project-centric organization is no small or easy task.

Staffing trends for 2022

What type of staff do you foresee in your 2022 PM infrastructure? What will you be planning from an administrative standpoint for a PPM system? Pick your level of detail and don’t overdo it. One common problem out of the gate is often to try to track too much information at too deep of a level of detail. For example, is it necessary to track that you have 3 full-time people on project ‘x’, or is it enough to know that you have 120 hours a week of employee time on project ‘x’? Again, it all depends on what problem you’re trying to solve. First, try to do it with high-level data and drill down further if you find that the problem you’re trying to solve warrants it.

How much should your organization spend?

The sky’s the limit on costs on a PPM solution – from free to relatively expensive. It all depends on the size of your user base, the makeup of your user base, and feature needs. Nearly everyone offers demos and free trials and also often webinars to help users and potential users educate and decide which PPM software tool is right for their project portfolio size and needs. Also, consider the potential need for training in that spending plan and buy the right license that may include that needed training. It’s a regrettable mistake that will not be an easy (or pretty) fix. If this isn’t considered upfront in the planning process, it can lead to a work stoppage, overspending, and missed timeframes. Not to mention that you’re going to want to make sure that whatever solution you decide upon helps you deliver your projects on time and profitably.

Conclusion: Create an Overall 2022 Planning Approach

Planning ahead is no easy task but this is the time of year where everyone is planning their budgets for next year. While priorities can and may shift, heading into 2022, when drained budgets have been re-loaded, with a good plan in place gives everyone a chance to start off on the right foot

Readers – what are your plans for 2022? To PPM or not to PPM? Is your organization big enough to need a PPM tool and do you currently have one or are you searching? Please share your thoughts about 2022 and your PM landscape and discuss.

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