Most organisations will have some sort of Project Lifecycle and Project Governance process. However, it is easy to fall into the trap of overcomplicating these processes and in doing so, producing so much documentation that the business cannot see the wood for the trees.
Rather than making things more complicated, businesses are going back to basics to concentrate on improving the essential elements of good project management. Financial reporting, resource capability planning, milestone management and project status reporting are all critical to achieving a successful and repeatable project delivery process.
In most organisations, the Programme Management Office (PMO) is responsible for upholding standards in relation to project governance and portfolio reporting. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) solutions are available to provide project managers with a means of managing the detail whilst presenting senior management with a summarised view of the entire portfolio of projects.
Project Status Reporting is the single most important process that needs to be considered when implementing a PPM solution. It continually tracks the health of key project indicators on a weekly or monthly basis, by taking a snapshot of the data and supporting narrative at a given point in time. In doing so, this encourages project managers to regularly update the system resulting in a very accurate view of those critical project indicators across the wider project portfolio.
The next challenge is to align the PMO and the Core Financial Function within the business. These two worlds are closely linked, with business units providing funding and resources to projects, in order to realise the forecasted benefits associated with those projects which are delivered by the PMO.
Successful alignment means that you can easily view the commercial impact of flexing either the business unit budgets or the project portfolio in real time. This is essential when responding to commercial opportunities, threats, or if you are conducting acquisition or merger activities.
Atlantic Global has developed an Organisational Planning solution that is fully integrated to its PPM solution. This ensures a greater level of accuracy and improved agility when business unit and project forecasts are being prepared.
Atlantic Global Organisation
Planning benefits
Financial management
Integrate the traditional Departmental Financial Forecasting Functions with the programme and project management functions. Provide management within the cost centres with the flexibility to plan their work and budgets at a more detailed level than that supported by the Central Finance System
Align all planned work to cost centres and nominal codes, the summary of which when combined with the actuals imported from finance gives you the revised forecast.
Enable the comparison of revised forecasts with budgets.
Capability management
The Planned Headcount capability enables you to shape the organisation before you move resources.
Co-ordinate the re-deployment of resources in, out and across the business.
Analyse the variance between Planned Headcount and People in Post at any level in the organisational hierarchy.
Real time
Provide a powerful means of combining organisational change and Portfolio Management Scenario Modelling where you can easily view the commercial impact of these changes.
The solution provides businesses with a powerful platform to constantly ‘flex’ their core and contingent organisational models. Contact: Eugene Blaine, CEO; Tel: +44(0)1274 863300; mailto:eugene.blaine@atlantic-global.com, www.atlanticÃ