5th Edition
Strategic Project & Portfolio Management
Transforming Projects, Empowering Portfolios: Lead the Change and Enhance Performance
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How do successful organizations ensure alignment between their project portfolios and overarching business targets?
An essential piece for success is constant alignment and information sharing. This can be typically achieved by integrating the Project Management function into the project review and release process. Such early on integration gives a PMO the needed head start to enter a project candidate into the portfolio even before it is started.
Describe the value of PMO.
A PMO is a neutral unit helping the most senior leaders to triangulate their views on the status of a project and the entire portfolio. Being able to rely on such a holistic view is the basis to make decisions affecting the entire portfolio. This can be, for example, to terminate a project mid way or infuse additional resources into another project to accelerate execution pace.
What, in your experience, are the key challenges faced in strategy execution, particularly concerning the PMO? Can you share examples of common pitfalls and misunderstandings that organizations encounter, and how these can be mitigated?
A PMO is often set up in a way that is similar to a project assistant. The tasks often include setting up meetings, creating status presentations or following-up on tasks. A PMO should be leveraged as a unit that generates a 360° overview on projects and it’s status. As a neutral unit, it can effectively balance conflicting interests – such as low purchase price vs. high availability of parts.
What are the key success factors for effective strategy execution through the PMO?
The most impactful key factor is to have full and real-time project portfolio transparency. This includes understanding which projects are part of the portfolio, what is their current status and what does the maturity forecast look like. And – most important – are they on track to deliver the committed value on time? A PMO should not only understand what kind of projects are planned and which are running. But also what is the aggregated value contribution of the portfolio. Such kind of data is typically available in the initial business cases which are to be kept up to date to reflect changes in the environment. In order to achieve that, a PMO needs to be strong on managing data. The project portfolio data has to be extracted from a well-maintained and professionally governed project management tool.
Ahead of the 5th Edition Strategic Project & Portfolio Management conference we spoke with Dr. Jens Erasmus, Global Director Business Transformation at ZF Group, Germany. Dr. Jens has studied Industrial Engineering and has researched on globally distributed value chains in the automotive industry. After playing a leading role in the M&A project between WABCO and ZF he has built a project-centric organization at global scale focusing on delivering next generation products for the commercial vehicles industry. His current scope includes business activities that generate >€4bn revenue p.a. delivered by more than 60 sales units worldwide.
17-19 April, 2024
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Dr. Jens Erasmus will be speaking during day one of the 5th Edition Strategic Project & Portfolio Management conference!
For registration pricing and multiple attendee discounts, please contact:
Ria Kiayia
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Interested? Do you feel you will benefit?
An interview with Dr. Jens Erasmus, Global Director Business Transformation at ZF Group, Germany
How do you measure the success of a transformation program, considering its global scale?
The simple answer is: when the single measures within the portfolio are visible in the P&L.
Case Study: Leading a Transformation Program at Global Scale (Co-presented with Maarten Van De Kerk, Project Lead Business Transformation at ZF Group, Germany)
- Why people embrace change.
- How to build local ownership.
- Ways to measure success.
