PPM (Project Portfolio Management) is fast becoming popular among businesses of all sizes. A well refined project portfolio management process will allow you and your team to plan, track, and control all aspects of a project from start to finish. The big questions come down to whether your processes and accompanying software are truly designed and monitored correctly to meet your needs, and if you and your team members are adhering to the plan.
In other words, is your company using PPM effectively?
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The above infographic makes some excellent points:
Growth of PPM over the years
Looking at the top of the graphic, more and more industries are adopting the use of PPM. While 7% growth over the ten years listed is anything but impressive, we see a number of industries to the right of that statistic to be seriously lacking. Finance, healthcare, retail, insurance and IT appear the biggest adopters, and they should be.
The bottom end of the PPM usage spectrum is rather worrisome, with key areas like manufacturing, energy, defense, and construction not making nearly as much use of PPM processes as they should. On the surface, these are definitely industries that need to make the most efficient use of time, money and resources.
Best practices
This section of the graphic is one everyone needs to take a close look at. At least 22% of users appear to not review and improve their PPM practices more than once or twice yearly. Even then, the disparity is nothing more than speculation — perhaps they never check those processes, making project management practices either out-dated or just words on a paper that are never adhered to.
Note that the implementation and improvement of performance measurement processes fall at the bottom of the list of PPM practices that are reviewed and improved by the majority. If your company isn’t performing at its best, how much is growth being hampered?
Top PPM priorities
This section of the graphic shows that those implementing a PPM plan into their daily operations have the best intentions in place. These numbers look as they should, with emphasis being placed in the right areas.
PPM project prioritization
This area of the graphic shows just how much the totality of projects in companies can vary. It would have been very helpful to reader to see industry-specific info to get a better picture of whether these numbers are a positive or negative.
For instance, is it a good or bad thing to have more than 100 projects in a single portfolio, or best to have fewer than 20? Should those 100 be broken down and have separate processes laid out? The reader really doesn’t know without knowing the amount of resources available to the companies included in the averages listed.
Advantages of PPM and final thoughts
The last sections of the graphic detail the power of PPM. Consider again that we learned at the start that 22% of companies and organizations polled may or may not even use PPM practices, or not bother to review and update them regularly.
Then consider those using PPM best practices show true growth and money and time savings across the board, such as many boasting a 26% improved ROI, 6.5% savings in the first year, and nearly 4 hours of weekly time saved on project reporting.
The infographic clearly shows that effective use of PPM practices is a major key to success, and that those who don’t use them or don’t use them effectively are missing out on major profit and growth benefits.