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New Foundation – Analytics Models

 

for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Certification

ADVISORY ARTICLE

By Dennis Wiggins

Georgia, USA


Today’s job market is extremely competitive in technology as we continually evolve to seek the “Best of the Best” contractors and employees in corporations. Employers seek recruits that have various certifications that complement their respective disciplines to reduce the learning curve for corporate in-house software applications for Project Management Office (PMO) Governance.

The disposition of PMO Governance is astonishing as published in numerous articles that I have read; the current state of maturity is that 50% of PMOs are closing within the first three years of their existence.  Also, that PMOs have the highest failure rate of any department in the business organization.  Listed below are the two (2) articles that have demonstrated failures of PMO’s:

1) “40 reasons why PMOs Fail”, and

2) “45 Stats You Can’t Ignore”.

The above-mentioned articles count of inefficiencies is excessive and can only be classified as an Immature PMO Governance. But my question is what happens to future information technology projects, the corporation certainly must evolve with technology. Do the future projects get subcontracted to consulting firms with high bill rates?  If so, I would wonder for the total projects in the portfolio if the trade-off were truly a value proposition, or merely a C-Level Executive anger management restructuring move to attempt to fix to the problem? This would be the apparent fix for cost overruns which can be negotiated in the type of contract (i.e., Fixed Price Contract) or the “Contract Terms and Conditions” binding the consulting firms to deliver the baseline scope.  Failure to do so would result in liquidated damages to be paid by consulting corporation or business insurance policy.

But, in a lot of cases, corporate bureaucracy allows PMOs to survive.  This is because the C-Level Executive understands that it is mandatory to achieve the corporate business objectives, but cannot acquire a holistic PPM solution (designed by PMO Practitioners) that does not require staffing augmentation to complete business critical tasks.  Therefore, they roll dice because something must be done to consolidate and summarize in reports the large working capital investments to the CEO & Board of Directors.  Although, this is not a blank check for deficient PMO Governance.  Eventually, someone must pay the piper (i.e., Chief Information Officer (CIO) or PMO Governance). It appears that three (3) years is the maximum before the CIO makes the decision to dissolve PMO Governance. I wonder if the remaining 50% is the turnover rate for the Chief Information Officer (CIO) based on a decision by the CEO & Board of Directors?  If so, there is a direct correlation between the success & failure of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) & PMO Governance for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) for the final answer of who gets terminated – CIO or PMO Governance.

But the truth is that the projects are failing at an excessive rate of 60% as published by the media for the technology industry.  If projects are only projected to succeed at a dismal rate of 40% the flow-through for the Program Managers, Portfolio Managers & PMO Governance is compounded by this deficiency at each level through the CIO Organization Hierarchy Level (refer to Appendix for hyperlinks to articles).

Part of the issue is that resources think that more certifications will keep you game fully employed and marketable to corporations and in some cases it may be true. In my opinion, you may become top-heavy and too expensive and the corporate requirement is going to be for more resources in the trenches to create ad hoc reports to meet C-Level reporting requirements at reduced rates.

This is when the downsizing starts because the benefits realization, return on investment (ROI), payback period (PB), etc. is not being achieved and restructuring begins to attempt to find the best C-Level Executive to align Strategic Execution with Tactical Execution.

As an Instructor for the following certifications: PMP, Lean Six Sigma Green & Black Belts what I see is a plethora of information (via textbooks) provided at a costly price with no resemblance to what the candidate can expect when applying their discipline in the real world for a corporation.

More…

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How to cite this article: Wiggins, D. (2021). New Foundation – Analytics Models for Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Certification, PM World Journal, Vol. X, Issue III, March.  Available online at https://pmworldlibrary.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/pmwj103-Mar2021-Wiggins-analytical-models-for-ppm-certification.pdf


About the Author


Dennis B. Wiggins

Chief Portfolio Officer (CPO)
ANALYTICS PLUS PPM2, LLC
Norcross, Georgia, USA

 

 Dennis Wiggins has over 25 years of experience and an expert in the Product / Project Portfolio Management (PPM2) discipline. He is a domestic & international Instructor for the following: Project Management, Lean Six Sigma Green Belt & Black Belt Courses. In addition, he is a domestic and international speaker for Product / Project Portfolio Management discipline.

Mr. Wiggins is a PMO Governance Leader contracted through Accenture (Big 4) Consulting for BellSouth Network Services; a $250 million-dollar portfolio with approximately 120 to 140 projects in flight and 70 to 90 Project / Program Managers.  He has reduced Project Portfolio Management (PPM) cycle time reporting in a matrix structure for Executives from 1 month to 1 week.  This resulted in a significant reduction in costs resulting from timely escalation and delivery of projects.

He is founder of Analytics Plus PPM2, LLC which automates and integrates the Chief Portfolio Officer (CPO) Organizational Hierarchy from the Project Manager, Program Manager, Portfolio Manager, PMO Governance, Product Owner, up to the Chief Portfolio Officer (CPO).

Dennis is a graduate from the State University at Old Westbury College with a Bachelor of Science in Business Management with a concentration in Finance. He is also a graduate of a world-renowned Financial Management Program (FMP) with General Electric with the following certifications: Project Management Professional (PMP), and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB).

Email: corporate@aplusppm2.com
Company website: https://aplusppm2.com/
Company (A+ PPM2) Linkedin: http://bit.ly/31FTPXg
Personal Linkedin:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/denniswiggins/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TEAMEXEC.PPM/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/PM_Dashboard