Portfolio Planning

Project management is not a process, but a promise

A project introduces something new.  New requires change from what was to a promise of what will.   The project deliverable, or promise, undertaken without process is a leap in the dark.  No sane person will take a leap in the dark without some promise or rational premise of: what will be, what it will cost [...]

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Social metrics that matter to your boss

A business case usually relies on numbers.  Numbers to justify the investment, numbers to project the return on investment, and numbers to compare against other investment opportunities.  Numbers that matter, matter differently dependent on the view of the person you talk to.  Certainly social media, or social software, numbers rely on us to know our [...]

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Getting it done versus getting it accomplished

Some people, and some organizations, can confuse very elemental operational concepts.  The confusion is tough to trace to a culture issue or a perception issue between getting it done versus getting it accomplished. Getting it done means you care more about finishing than about quality. Very different terms. Very different concepts. An alternative way to [...]

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An organization intervention is not an organization inquisition

Proposals for organization intervention, from business process reengineering to Lean initiatives, typically focus on problems to be solved.  Many of these organization interventions for change, however, soon look like organization inquisition.  As once a problem is identified, the problem is the focus to diagnos soon both the organization and the people involved pointed out as [...]

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Business strategy failures are project management failures

The essence of strategic change is not a new direction, but a series of directives on what to start, what to stop, and what to continue. After all, a strategic plan really acts as a roadmap or charter for change.  A plan not carried out is a project failure. The difficulty of strategy implementation is a [...]

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Technical ability does little to mitigate risk

Organizations don’t simply run from a strategic plan prescription.  Projected cash flows don’t deliver themselves.  Business units don’t run in a vacuum.  All these efforts take the collaborative knowledge, ability, and skills of people and teams. If you recruit people with evaluation efforts that focus on industry experience, work history, and academic education, evidence shows [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions failures are project management failures

Projects are how organizations realize their strategies.  To remain competitive organizations rely on successful project delivery.  Delivering on budget, on time, and within scope defines project success.  Using a project management hat to review mergers and acquisitions reframes the effort as a project to deliver on budget, within a certain time, and on expected synergies [...]

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Recap: Scope or how to manage projects for organization success

A recap on my series of 4 blogs around project scope.  Includes links to slide deck and customizable templates: 1. Scope or:  How to manage projects for organization success, part 1 The ability to deliver a project is the ability to compete. Scope kills projects and projects that are not delivered kill organizations. Scope is one [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 3

Systems thinking strategies for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) provide better integration valuations and post-merger operations.  Organizations are composed of several components that interact with each other while simultaneously act as part of a whole.  Systems theory helps explain dynamic interrelationship of several parts, beyond information technology or back office functions. No matter the motive for [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 2

Many mergers and acquisitions fail to understand the full impact of what systems truly encompasses.  When evaluating merger integration risk the reality is true integration risk identification can only happen with an evaluation of systems integration.  However, systems strategy discussions frequently devolve into information technology systems strategies. As much as the information technology needs an [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; stakeholder analysis template

A stakeholder is anyone [or any group] who can positively or negatively affect the outcome of the project. Risk is anything that can positively or negatively affect the outcome of the project.  So, identifying and managing project stakeholders is an important step to identifying and managing project risk. Each project has a unique set of stakeholders, [...]

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Mergers and acquisitions systems thinking strategies, part 1

I transitioned into a human capital focus gradually over my career.  My collected experiences just overwhelmingly led me to realize without commitment, understanding, and ownership you have little hope of individual, team, or organization success.  What on earth brought about a mergers and acquisitions systems thinking approach?  Well where we are usually has a lot [...]

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Evaluating risk: financial models versus competency models, part 2

Models attempt to identify the assets that have value.  How to manage those assets.  And how to strategically turn these assets into money.  This is a 2nd, follow-up, post comparing financial models to competency models to evaluate risk. As I mentioned in that post, typical financial models and their build-outs inherently ignore important aspects of [...]

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9 views into your organization with a project management lens

Project management offers a way to breathe new life into your organization’s competitive and operational advantage, but why is project management seemingly stuck in engineering or scientific theory? Project management may look like an engineering, top-down control process, but project management is less process and more a discipline:  like accounting.  Anyone familiar with accounting knows asset [...]

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Discounted risk is human capital risk

Many firms admit they rely on the quality of entrepreneur to determine their funding decision, but rarely is this “quality” represented in a measurable, comparable assessment, or at least as measurable as weighted average cost of capital, discounted cash flow, capital asset pricing model, risk-adjusted rate of return, and other abstract financial models. Human capital [...]

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Evaluating risk: financial models versus competency models, part 1

We make models to get an idea, on a small-scale, of what might happen on a large-scale.  Models help identify risk and attempt to predict outcomes.  Many use models to then run scenarios or alternatives to identify what could or should be.  Models then become a map for many management discussions as models provide options [...]

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Venture Capital and the descent into irrelevance

The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward. Elemental finance: you assume the amount of risk suitable for an expected payoff. You assume bigger risk and its bigger payoff with the full caveat that there is an equally big downside loss that could happen. Invest in a money market and get slow, steady, decimal-point-% returns; [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 2

The key for organizations to grow and to thrive relies on how to manage projects.  And how you and your organization manage projects for organization success is an industry competitive advantage.  But why do so many projects fail? Is it lack of preparation? Is it lack of communication? Is it lack of commitment? No, those [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success; impact analysis template

On my previous post, Scope or:  how to manage projects for organization success that included the eBook Scope – Kills Bad Breath and Kills Projects [link below] I introduced the importance of scope before a project launches.  The numbers on project failure are sobering:  90% of all projects fail and this post follows up both the blog [...]

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Human capital risk, now that’s real risk

You commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people and when it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs.  Human capital risk is the real risk, but most investment firms don’t focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on quantifying the people or [...]

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Scope or: how to manage projects for organization success, part 1

Organizations rely on projects to remain competitive.  Projects are the way organizations deliver and realize their executive strategies.  The ability to deliver a project is the ability to compete.  Scope kills projects and projects that are not delivered kill organizations.  Scope is one of the most important ways to manage project success.  And when projects [...]

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Sales, finance, and human resources, only room for 2 at the table

There are really on 3 swim lanes, or functions, in business. Every business function is subordinated to either; sales, finance, or human resources. How can HR possibly have any impact when business is all about sales, brining in the money and finance making the best use of the money?

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Human capital portfolio management and simple math

A venture’s viability really comes down to a bet on a team to deliver.  It is the interpersonal process where venture performance is most impacted. Modern portfolio theory allows investors to maximize return and minimize risk.  The goal is to estimate both the expected risks and returns, as measured statistically, as an accumulation of investments.  Why use [...]

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Innovation Boston and Budapest, or Dirty Water and the Blue Danube

13 years offers a great opportunity to revisit most relationships.  At first blush, Boston and Budapest seem to have little to share or offer each in a study on innovation.  However, both share unique innovation environments that reveal themselves upon further review. I am a Boston native and, after my undergraduate degree from Berklee College of Music, Boston [...]

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Risk is an unnecessary (p)art of the deal

To identify where risk is a real part of the investment deal you will commonly hear an equity firm or VC partner claim, we invest in the people.  When it comes to costs, human capital usually represents nearly 70% of all operating costs, but most investment firms focus investment decisions and deal valuation not on [...]

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4 tips to use Twitter for project management

In my last post I presented a case to manage your projects as a business portfolio. The ability to deliver projects on time, on budget, and within scope directly impacts your organization’s ability to compete and stay alive and project failure is an organization-wide risk. In this post I want to introduce Twitter to manage [...]

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Why your business strategy is a project portfolio

It starts with an executive need: a new market evaluation; improve operating margins; a game-changing technology; your competition is eating your lunch. Whatever the reason, a project is how an organization translates an executive strategy. The ability to scope and deliver a project is a competitive advantage. The best organizations realize project management capability as [...]

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IT failure, too much information in Information Technology

Technology enables information, but why are so many information technology projects failing? 74% of all projects fail, come in over budget, or run past the original deadline* 90% of major Information Technology (IT) project initiatives fail to be completed on time and on budget* A survey by the international consulting firm KPMG finds that 56% [...]

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CSI Music Industry, Part 1: The Crime Scene

First in a series of investigations into the death of the music industry record business. Background: I went to Berklee College of Music as a conducting and arranging major. I switched my major to music business mid-way when I discovered how lawyers and accountants make the major decisions about the music I heard. I wanted [...]

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All projects are human capital projects

The valuation of a company usually involves 4 areas: physical capital, financial capital, intellectual capital, and human capital Valuation is a combination of science, art, and straight voodoo (Enron anyone???). Voodoo aside, when I recast these valuations from a new angle, I see each relies, in their entirety, on people: physical capital – people are [...]

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3 reasons for failure: change, participation, and risk

An organization builds a culture of success when it can take a strategy, identify and prioritize the most important projects within the strategy, and consistently deliver projects on time, on budget, and within identified quality standards. Charting success is not easy. 80% of all projects fail for three main reasons. 1. 80% of projects fail [...]

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What Businesses Can Learn About Innovation … a comment about the numbers

I read Stephen Shapiro’s excellent blog on innovation and wanted to pull over one of his blogs and my comments with a chance to expand them here. This post brings together 2 topics that are powerful when coupled, but too often stand apart and at odds:  numbers and stories. Innumeracy, numerical illiteracy, stands in the [...]

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The VC’s missing formula: human capital discounted cash flow

What valuation models measure human capital ability to meet financial and strategic business goals? What formulas are used to measure human capital contribution to profits? What are the human capital risk factors you justify when you build your financial statements and projections?  Accounting’s assignment of assets and liabilities and financial management’s current or pro forma [...]

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The devil in the details – the strategic plan

While with the FBI working in the Director’s Office of Strategic Planning I began to realize there are many approaches to build a strategic plan.  I wanted a plan that could go into operation and provide performance management measures.  I also wanted a repeatable process that was understood, committed to, and creates ownership.  Over time, and [...]

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Statistically, your strategy will fail

I recently ran across a statistics book and began to think about similarities to strategic planning. Statistics:  a mathematical science pertaining to the collection, analysis, interpretation or explanation, and presentation of data.  It also provides tools for prediction and forecasting based on data. Until this week, I had not thought statistics had as much in [...]

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How goals help us fail

March 15th I read an article in Boston’s Sunday Globe Ideas section on how goals have a dangerous side. The article called Why Setting Goals Can Backfire jumped-started my thoughts on goals. The past two weeks I have spent time thinking and scribbling notes all over this article. I thought I’d share some. [the .pdf [...]

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