Readiness Assessment

When implementing a PPM process it is best to keep in mind the following key questions:

• Executive sponsorship: Are we going to get executive support to implement a Project Portfolio Management process? Will we get adequate funding, people and time to implement this?
• Culture and organisation structure: How flexible are the staff, can they change their existing mind-set as well as business processes?
• Project management and business processes: How do we tie our strategic objective to project deliverables, and what will be the impact of PPM on our existing business processes and project management infrastructure?
• Metrics and performance criteria: Have we established realistic, measurable performance criteria? What will be our ROI and ROO models?
• Quick wins and credibility: How do we ensure that we get quick wins and quick ROI? How do we ensure that PPM is taken seriously as a change management project? Are our resources going to provide us with the right inputs to go into the PPM infrastructure?
• PPM staff and experts: Will we have internal or external PPM experts who can manage the whole process of PPM evolution in the organisation, that is, selecting a PPM vendor, establishing success criteria, taking alternative actions if PPM implementation does not go as planned, and monitoring vendor artefacts and processes?
• Technology: Are our staff technically minded enough to use the software to its utmost capacity?