Take Control Of Your Project Spend

• Do you know how much your company spends on change each year?

• Do you feel in control of your business change spend throughout the year?

• Do you feel you always know what the status of your change projects is?

• Do you think you spend your change budget on projects that give you the most benefit?

• Do you have a way to prioritise your change projects effectively?

If you have answered ‘NO’ to any of these questions, you are not alone. The Project Management Institute (PMI) estimates that in 2016 12% of project spend was wasted on projects that did not complete, did not deliver the benefits expected, significantly overran initial forecasts or did not support the company’s overall strategic direction. Many large businesses use a PMO (Portfolio Management Office) to provide their leadership teams with the information needed for making decisions about project prioritisation, funding and resourcing. However, this is equally critical to smaller businesses where budgets are limited. What is a PMO? A Portfolio Management Office manages the processes necessary to collate the data required to enable a company to register and view information about its current and proposed projects. Using this information enables that company to manage and prioritise projects according to an agreed set of criteria, such as:

• Legislative or regulatory requirements

• Essential upgrades

• Strategic benefit

• Cost

• Short term gain

Large organisations may employ teams of full time resources to manage this information, but for smaller companies this simply isn’t cost effective. This is where a ‘virtual’ PMO provides benefit, by providing specialist skills to run these processes for you on an agreed number of days per month, or just by helping you set up the process for yourself.