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OPM3™ Solutions
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FAQ - OPM3TM
IT organizations are normally in the business of delivering systems to help other parts of the business become more successful. “More successful” is defined either by generating more revenue or by reducing internal costs. These are the primary goals or reasons for having an IT-organization. However, we observe frequently that IT-departments fail to deliver against these two primary goals. Sometimes, their project results are neither relevant or valid to the users’ needs. How can such situations be avoided? Fixing the problem starts with examination of the corporate strategy. If the corporate strategy is not clearly defined, then the IT strategy is correspondingly weak. But even if the corporate strategy has been defined in detail, the IT-strategy may not be aligned with it. What are the implications of non-alignment for the organization? The likeliest implication of mis-alignement is that the IT-department invests resources in a way which does not meet the strategic needs of the business. Let me give you an example: We recently analyzed the project portfolio of a large company and the IT-department had well over 100 projects allocated to it The projects varied from major ones to small initiatives. However, the department had only 30 staff. Realistically, these 30 staffers could only manage some 5 to 10 projects. What happened to the other 90 projects? Well, as the pressure was building up, the staffers continued on the non mission-critical projects as well as the priority ones on a rotational basis. The result: none of the projects was completed on time, within budget or delivering a system which addresses a business need. Sure, this example is a very extreme one. Or is it instead a daily occurrence in many organizations? We recently visited another organization which claimed to be on CMMi Level 3 and to be untroubled by any challenges with project management. However the clients of this organization were complaining that they are not receiving value from the company. We analyzed the situation and discovered that the organization was very good in producing high-quality shelf-ware. The project prioritization of the IT- department was not synchronized with the expectations of the business. For example, an important Internet-based sales process was not automated, but rather the IT-department invested its resources in rolling-out a telephone system which was running on VoIP. The quality of the new telephone service was perceived as less than with the old system, thus nobody outside of IT understood the benefit of the project. How did this happpen? The IT-department did not listen to the users, or should we better say “customers” and attempted to address the technical challenge rather than the underlying business need. This is the application area of OPM3. OPM3 aligns the project portfolio of the IT-department to the real needs of the organization. How does this work? The corporate strategy is used to create a portfolio of projects and programs. Within this portfolio programs and projects are initialized, planned, executed, controlled and closed. The criteria for the portfolio can be: • strategic • financial • resources These criteria help to keep the portfolio in balance. In order to establish relevant criteria and a balanced portfolio, an organization has to implement so-called Best Practices. Depending on the needs of the organization, the important Best Practices may vary.Therefore the first thing to do in an OPM3 implementation is an assessment of the current stage of organizational project management maturity. Then an improvement plan will be developed and implemented. The result will be that the IT-department will become a major contributor to the success of the company.
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