Grow Your Own PPM Solution

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As portfolio manager, you’re responsible for supporting the intake of new project requests, providing visibility into the portfolio of in-flight projects, and helping to facilitate the right approval and prioritization decisions.
You need a project portfolio management (PPM) tool that promotes the maintenance and flow of good data to help you succeed in these tasks. However, while throwing expensive technology at bad process rarely works, many organizations take this approach to solve their PPM problems.
Commercial PPM solutions are powerful and compelling, but they are also expensive, complex, and hard to use. When a solution is not properly adopted, the data can be unreliable and inconsistent, defeating the point of purchasing a tool in the first place.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Your choice of PPM solution must be in tune with your organizational PPM maturity to ensure that you are prepared to sustain the tool use without having the corresponding PPM processes collapse under its own weight.
A spreadsheet-based homegrown PPM solution can provide key capabilities of an optimized PPM solution with a high level of sophistication and complexity without the prohibitive capital and labor costs demanded by commercial PPM solution.
Focus on your PPM decision makers that will consume the reports and insights by investigating their specific reporting needs.

Impact and Result

Think outside the commercial box. Develop an affordable, adoptable, and effective PPM solution using widely available tools based on Info-Tech’s ready-to-deploy templates.
Make your solution sustainable. When it comes to portfolio management, high level is better. A tool that is accurate and maintainable will provide more value than one that strives for precise data yet is ultimately unmaintainable.
Report success. A PPM tool needs to foster portfolio visibility in order to engage and inform the executive layer and support effective decision making.

Grow Your Own PPM Solution Research & Tools

Start here – read the Executive Brief

Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should grow your own PPM solution, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.

Grow Your Own PPM Solution – Executive Brief

1. Right-size your PPM solution

Scope an affordable, adoptable, and effective PPM solution with Info-Tech's Portfolio Manager 2017 workbook.

2. Get to know Portfolio Manager 2017

Learn how to use Info-Tech's Portfolio Manager 2017 workbook and create powerful reports.

3. Implement your homegrown PPM solution

Plan and implement an affordable, adoptable, and effective PPM solution with Info-Tech's Portfolio Manager 2017 workbook.

4. Outgrow your own PPM solution

Develop an exit strategy from your home-grown solution to a commercial PPM toolset. In this video, we show a rapid transition from the Excel dataset shown on this page to a commercial solution from Meisterplan. Christoph Hirnle of Meisterplan is interviewed starting at 9 minutes.

Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

10.0/10

Overall Impact

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Testimonial

High Liner Foods Incorporated

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Travis is very knowledgeable and extremely patient and kind. I appreciated his fast response and ability to guide me.

Childfund International

Guided Implementation

8/10

$61,999

Enjoy speaking with Travis. He shared some good tools. It's a lot to pack in to 45 minutes. This will help me to not have to buy a PPM tool righ... Read More

Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada

Guided Implementation

8/10

$1,000

City of Westminster, CO

Guided Implementation

9/10

$61,462

Barry Cousins is well versed in the subject and helped put things into perspective. My experience with Info-Tech has been great with no worst par... Read More

City of Sequim

Guided Implementation

8/10

N/A

Tim was great - provided tools to help me prioritize our upcoming projects and initiatives. Can't wait to give them a spin.

First Merchants Corporation

Guided Implementation

10/10

$1,273

Travis is very easy to work with and easy to understand.

The University of Texas at San Antonio

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

Parks Canada

Guided Implementation

10/10

$25,000

Gokul was knowledgeable and presented information in an engaging and understandable format. No perceived downside, we're very much looking forwar... Read More

Armstrong Flooring Solutions

Guided Implementation

10/10

$63,667

120

Clallam County

Guided Implementation

10/10

$12,733

The tips and tricks for the tool provided to me today are an absolute lifesaver and I'm just blown away on what else I can do with it to make my li... Read More

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Workshop: Grow Your Own PPM Solution

Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.

Module 1: Scope a Homegrown PPM Solution for Your Organization

The Purpose

Assess the current state of project portfolio management capability at your organization. The activities in this module will inform the next modules by exploring your organization’s current strengths and weaknesses and identifying areas that require improvement.
Set up the workbook to generate a fully functional project portfolio workbook that will give you a high-level view into your portfolio.

Key Benefits Achieved

A high-level review of your current project portfolio capability is used to decide whether a homegrown PPM solution is an appropriate choice
Cost-benefit analysis is done to build a business case for supporting this choice

Activities

Outputs

1.1

Review existing PPM strategy and processes.

Confirmation of homegrown PPM solution as the right choice

1.2

Perform a cost-benefit analysis.

Expected benefits for the PPM solution

Module 2: Get to Know Portfolio Manager 2017

The Purpose

Define a list of requirements for your PPM solution that meets the needs of all stakeholders.

Key Benefits Achieved

A fully customized PPM solution in your chosen platform

Activities

Outputs

2.1

Introduction to Info-Tech's Portfolio Manager 2017: inputs, outputs, and the data model.

Trained project/resource managers on the homegrown solution

2.2

Gather requirements for enhancements and customizations.

A wish list of enhancements and customizations

Module 3: Implement Your Homegrown PPM Solution

The Purpose

Determine an action plan regarding next steps for implementation.
Implement your homegrown PPM solution. The activities outlined in this step will help to promote adoption of the tool throughout your organization.

Key Benefits Achieved

A set of processes to integrate the new homegrown PPM solution into existing PPM activities
Plans for piloting the new processes, process improvement, and stakeholder communication

Activities

Outputs

3.1

Plan to integrate your new solution into your PPM processes.

Portfolio Manager 2017 operating manual, which documents how Portfolio Manager 2017 is used to augment the PPM processes

3.2

Plan to pilot the new processes.

Plan for a pilot run and post-pilot evaluation for a wider rollout

3.3

Manage stakeholder communications.

Communication plan for impacted PPM stakeholders

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 9 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Right-size your PPM solution

Call 1: Scope the discussion with your existing PPM strategy.
Call 2: Confirm your organization’s readiness for a homegrown solution.
Call 3: Conduct a cost-benefit analysis and right-size your homegrown PPM solution.

Guided Implementation 2: Get to know Portfolio Manager 2017

Call 1: Enter project portfolio data.
Call 2: Right-size reports for your project portfolio stakeholders.
Call 3: Discuss how to customize portfolio data structure, reports, and other tool functionalities.

Guided Implementation 3: Implement your PPM solution

Call 1: Identify opportunities for injecting the new tool into the PPM processes.
Call 2: Design a pilot run for using your new PPM solution.
Call 3: Create a communication plan for leadership and project managers.