So, welcome everybody.
Uh, my name is Stewart and, uh, I'm the CEO
and one of the founders here at Transparent Choice.
And every month we do, uh, we do these, these demo webinars.
And a few months ago we, we kind of accidentally
did something and, uh, the, the attendees loved it,
which is we, we had somebody join us who,
who'd never really seen the software before.
Uh, so the, the first one was Stuart Taylor.
I don't, do you know Stuart Luann?
He, he's a, he does a lot
of YouTubeing on pro project management.
Yes. And, um,
and people loved it so much that we've,
we've just kept doing it, right?
So, so this time I'm absolutely over the moon to, to welcome
with us, uh, Luann Picard, um, if you don't know Luann,
uh, uh, she's, uh, professor, uh, of project management
and various other things at, uh, uh, university of,
of Anchorage, university of Alaska.
What's the proper mm-hmm. The proper term, Luanne. Yep.
And, uh, uh, and yep.
Until, until December, she, she also had the privilege.
She had the burden.
You could choose which one you like of being the chair
of the, the PMI, uh, globally, which,
uh, which was great.
So Luann is a super expert in all things project management.
Um, so, so Luann, do you,
do you wanna just take a minute and introduce yourself?
Sure. Um, and thank you Stuart,
for inviting me to be here today.
It's really delightful to partner
with you in this, um, in this session.
It's really a great opportunity, I think, for you to be able
to share new insights
and opportunities for how
to help people be more effective in what they're doing,
particularly in this really important subject.
And, um, I'm delighted to be here.
So, as Stuart mentioned, I'm a professor
of project management at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
And through the end of December, I was, um, served
for six years on the PMI Board of Directors.
And last year, uh, specifically as chair, but
before I started in academia,
I also spent 20 years in, in industry.
So I was an executive for Hewlett Packard and, um,
and gonna be a pr I was a practitioner like many
of you in the sense that I managed a very,
very large global portfolio of products
and projects around the world for hp.
And so this challenge of how to do prioritization and,
and manage an effective PMO
and portfolio is, is something that was, uh,
critically important to me and the work that I did then.
So I'm delighted to join you,
and hopefully we'll be able to
support Steward in providing some insights
into this important topic.
So thank you for the invitation to be here today.
Awesome. Thank, thank you Luann.
Um, and, um, uh, anybody who's worried for Luanne,
'cause obviously, um, if you know your time zones,
Anchorage is, you know, it's, it's like five in the morning,
six in the morning over there,
but Lu Ann's actually on the East coast today, so, so,
so it's not too early.
Um, so I'm delighted about that.
Um, so before we, uh,
before we jump in too far, uh, just very quickly,
um, uh, apologies.
Luann is as, as I mentioned, traveling
and the, her, uh, her connection is not perfect,
but, uh, we'll soldier on and see how that that goes.
So, kind of the format here is that Luann is here basically
to represent you guys, right?
To ask the questions to react.
She's never, you, you've never seen the software
before, Luann, I don't think.
No, no. There we go. So, never seen the software before.
So it, it's a little bit like a celebrity
unboxing video, right?
That's, that's the idea.
Uh, so we're gonna unbox some portfolio
management stuff today.
Um, so, so kind of two chunks to it.
First is a little bit of Stewart doing
what Stewart does with ducks.
Um, and then we will, uh,
then we'll jump into the software itself.
And, you know, Luanne is hopefully gonna interrupt
with questions, stories, observations, anecdotes from, uh,
from her background where, where that feels appropriate.
And Luanne, I know you won't be shy,
but do, do, jump in whenever you want to.
Um, fantastic. So let's, let's go.
Um, I will be keeping half an eye on the, um, uh,
half an eye on the chat.
So if you have questions
or comments, please do drop them into the chat
and, uh, I will do my best to, to deal 'em as we go.
Um, excellent. Right? We're gonna have some fun ducks.
Why, why do we talk about ducks?
We have to talk about portfolio management, right?
So why are we talking about ducks?
Well, look, here's, here's the harsh reality.
Your projects are like ducks, right?
So, so your executives don't care if you have a boy
duck or a girl duck.
They don't care about waterfall.
Agile don't care about your Gantt charts
or your burn down reports.
They don't care about any of that, right?
So they don't care if you have a boy duck or a girl duck.
They just want eggs, right?
They want the value from the project.
So as a, as a community, our, our job is to try
and maximize the eggs, right?
The value that we're giving executives.
And that's why we're gonna talk about portfolio management.
'cause it's one of the, it's one of the biggest levers
that you've got to increase the value for the execs.
And unfortunately, um, you know,
execs are generally unhappy, right?
So we've got got the,
the incredible duckling here on the left who's really not
very happy stomping around.
Um, and, and the statistics kind of explain why right?
Around half of projects don't deliver the egg, right?
They don't actually deliver the value that was, that,
that was intended about a third of the day projects.
And in a total loss, you know,
project failed budget loss, right?
Total disaster. Um, and, uh,
and, you know, research looking at PMOs, uh, talks about 70%
of PMOs being called into question.
'cause they're just not delivering the value that, uh,
that the, that the world wants, that the executives want
from, uh, from the PMO.
So, quick question. When projects fail, right?
Fingers on keyboards, we may do this once
or twice through the, through the session.
So get your fingers ready on the chat.
Um, so when projects fail, who gets the blame?
I should have warned you, Hulk Duck. There we go.
That's pretty and ambiguous.
Project management,
the project manager gets the blame, right?
Um, so the project manager gets the blame.
You're absolutely right. Um, but do they deserve it?
And, and the point of this is that, um, I think a lot of,
well, actually what the research suggests is that
most projects that fail, um, were set up
to fail, right?
It's like sending this guy to the top
of the ladder to juggle knives.
What could possibly go wrong in this scenario?
Well, everything right is being set up to fail.
And a lot of projects are set up to fail with, uh, you know,
when, when organizations try to do too many projects
or do everything all at once,
or they're always changing direction, right?
Uh, and, you know, these are just some of the, some
of the things that, that set you up
as a project manager to fail.
So, so Luann, you must have wrestled with this a lot at hp,
um, where, you know, you've got a big portfolio, um,
figuring out how to not overload people.
Does that, does that resonate with you?
Yeah, and I think too that what, what I often saw,
and probably we'll talk a little bit more about that today,
is that it's not always clear whether the,
what the executives consider to be success
and what the measures are
for a specific project are always well aligned.
And so the, the work that a project manager
and their team might be doing when it's not fully aligned
with what the objectives are for the executives, no matter
what is done, it can sometimes be perceived as a fail.
And so that's why the setup to fail sometimes happens
because that strategic alignment
and that line of sight between what the executives expect
and what the project is doing aren't always as clear
and as aligned as they could be.
Yeah. And, and one example of that actually would be,
you know, my very first, um, foray into, into projects,
um, I knew nothing about projects.
I'd just joined a software company
that did telco billing systems.
I knew nothing about telco, I knew nothing about billing.
So of course, the natural thing was to give me profit
and loss responsibility for their two biggest accounts.
Um, that's, that's naturally
what you do when somebody has no idea what to do.
And so the, you know, they just closed the, uh, a huge deal
with, uh, with the world's biggest telco at the time.
And so literally my second week, I, I, I flew down
for the project kickoff and our project manager, you know,
before we walked in and said, look, Stuart,
let's get one thing straight.
You don't know anything about billing,
you don't think about telco,
you don't know anything about project management.
So your job is to smile, nod, shake people's hands
and be nice, right?
But whatever you do, don't say anything.
And so the, so the, the customer's project manager kind
of stood up and said, you know, kind of did the daily,
beloved, we are gathered here today
to replace a billing system.
My hand went straight up
and, um, you know, my project manager's looking at me like,
you had one job, keep quiet.
Um, so they said, yeah, what Stuart,
what's, what's, what's your point?
I said, well, we're not here to replace
a billing system, are we?
They're like, well, yeah, we're paying you
$13 million to replace the billing system.
I said, no, you're not. You're paying us
$13 million to grow revenue.
You, right?
And, and I think that's,
that's what you're talking about there.
That, that, that, yes, disconnect between, you know, oh,
well, I, I'm looking at the deliverable versus I'm looking
at the, the business outcome.
And so, you know, this whole portfolio management thing is
about trying to align those two, trying to maximize the,
the value that the business, uh, that the business gets.
And so, you know, one of the key things, one
of the key ways in which organizations usually set project
managers up to fail is they try
to do too many projects, right?
And, and if you're doing too many projects,
you people are overloaded.
And so we all talk about multitasking.
What the psychology research actually tells us is
that people do not multitask.
They task switch, right?
So they go from task to task to task.
We're not really capable of multitasking on anything
that requires any kind of cognitive, any kind of thinking,
uh, engagement.
And so when you're mul, when you're task switching, um,
you lose up to 40% of capacity, right?
It's just lost to managing the task switching.
So if you imagine you are somebody delivering tasks on a
project, right?
You settle down to do your project,
and then you get interrupted 10 minutes later
by someone asking you about a different project
that you're meant to be working on.
And so it takes you 15 minutes to answer that.
And then, and then, and then you've gotta get your head back
into it, and you're just getting going
and someone comes along and asks you about
another project, right?
And, and before you know it,
you've lost 40% of your capacity.
Um, so when, when prioritization's gone wrong, right?
So you have too many projects.
Often we find that it's hard to say no to, to projects.
So, so in the chat, by the way, as I'm going through this,
please jump in and just say, yay, or give me a thumbs up
or a heart or something to let me know whether
or not these, these things resonate with you.
So having too many projects is one of the,
one of the key things, right?
Saying, you know, it's hard to say no to projects, right?
This we see again and again and again.
You know, executives will defend and defend
and defend their projects and never want to kill them, okay?
That's a real problem that gets in the way of delivery.
So you end up with a whole bunch of, uh, of pet projects
and zombie projects and all kinds of stuff
because you're not able to kill them.
Um, Luann you mentioned this a a few minutes ago, that,
you know, the, the line of sight from what do we want
to achieve as a business and the work we're actually doing
isn't always clear, right?
So, so the, the, the, the, the phrase when I ask PMO leaders
around the world, you know, is your are are your project.
So how, you know, how well aligned are your projects
with strategy, the most common answer to that is
what strategy, right?
So, so again, if, if this sounds familiar,
let's get those hearts going in the thumbs up.
Let's, let's get in there
and let's feel the pain, share the pain.
And when this happens, very often it means if you don't have
clear, um, clarity around the strategy
and what you're trying to achieve,
then often the good projects get disguised, right?
They're hidden, you don't realize they're the good projects.
So you've got, you know, the kind
of the Groucho Marx duck here, um, the, you know, with this,
with this false nose disguised, um, which means
that you can't focus on them.
And worst of all, you get the vampire projects, the ones
where, you know, we just shouldn't be doing them.
But then they get into trouble and they start sucking more
and more resources from, from the projects
that really matter, right?
So, so then, then you're not delivering the
projects that actually matter.
And this, this all comes down to portfolio management.
If you, you know, this, this is all at the root cause.
It's, this happens because we don't have clarity on which
projects we should be doing.
And at the end of the day, it means
that our projects are over budget, our projects are late,
and everybody's, everybody's unhappy.
So I want to share, we've got quite a few people from the
NHS on the this call.
So I'm expecting, I dunno what I'm expecting,
I don't think I'm gonna get thumbs up
for this one 'cause it's gonna hurt too much.
'cause I suspect that it's gonna resonate
too much with some of you.
But I was speaking with one PMO leader a while ago
within the NHS,
and they, they basically said, look,
we were just given these targets
and we have, we don't get to negotiate.
And management said, there's 120 projects,
just find a way, right?
Has anybody ever heard that? Just find a way. Okay?
So, so what happened?
Have a guess who, who'd like to have a guess how many
of these projects they actually
finished jump onto the chat?
How many projects do you think they actually
finished out of 120?
So they started all of those projects. There we go.
So, so Jim, you're even more skeptical than I am.
Oh, there's some good numbers. Three,
I like three 50 bit optimistic.
Uh, 20%. Yeah. So it was actually about 20 projects.
They finished around 20 projects.
So, you know, so, so i i, from the executive's point
of view, then Luann, right?
If you were mm-hmm. If you were running that portfolio,
how much value did you get outta
the other a hundred projects?
The ones that, that they put all the effort into,
but you didn't actually finish?
How much value would you have got from that?
In fact, negative value, right?
Because, um, if the opportunity cost of having spent all
of those resources and time on things
that ultimately didn't produce any sort of outcomes,
you never get that time or those resources back to be able
to apply them to things that actually do matter.
So it's not just a zero, it's actually less than zero
because of the opportunity cost.
And so, um, that is, um, it, it's, I'm sorry to have heard
that because that is not just frustrating
for the organization and the limited resources organizations
have to deliver value,
but for the individuals
that are involved working their hearts out, trying
to do the right thing according to what they were asked
to do, and feeling that
what they did ultimately didn't produce
an outcome that mattered.
So it's, um, it's a systemic issue.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and it's,
and do you know what the people on those projects, how,
how do they feel at the end
of the project when the project fails?
You know, they, they don't feel good, right?
They feel they feel bad.
Exactly. And in,
and in fact, the, you know, the, the PMO team are the ones
who ended up getting beaten up, right?
So, so, you know, they worked really hard for the year.
They did the best they could, but they were set up to fail
because there was no good portfolio
management process in place.
And, you know, my guess is that for, for a lot of you,
you've probably raised this issue with a leadership team
one way or another, right?
About, you know, we need you guys to engage
with project management or with, with prioritization
or not, uh, you know, helping us, uh,
allocate resources more effectively.
And very often the answer that you get is just go,
just make it happen, right?
Go away and make it happen. So the first step in fixing any
of this is what we call a case for change.
And this is, this has got nothing to do
with our software or anything like that.
This is, this is a little workshop that we,
we help people go through where essentially
what you're doing is you're looking at the business
challenges that you, that the executives have around
strategy execution or project execution,
and do a little bit of root cause analysis
and just help the executive team understand
where the root causes are.
And the root cause is almost always, uh, prioritization,
resource capacity planning,
and maybe a little bit of skills, right?
Training and things like that.
Um, not just for project managers,
but also for the executive team themselves sometimes.
And, and so those are the, those are the three big things.
And so the case for change will help you, um, uh,
engage the executive team in that discussion
and create the, um, create the plan for them, you know,
the visibility from their pain to the root cause.
And then what does the plan look like to fix it? Okay?
So if you want to take one of these, uh, workshops, uh,
Lenora just dropped the link into the, into the chat,
go book it now before you forget.
Uh, and whether you use our software or not, right?
It's got nothing to do with the software, really.
It's to do with engaging your executives in this
conversation so that you don't get that reaction, right?
The just, you know, talk to the hand.
Nobody wants to talk to the hand.
So why should you listen to us about how to fix this stuff?
Well, to start with, we're a bunch
of decision science geeks.
We actually, one of my co-founders used
to teach decision science.
So we, this, you know,
this whole portfolio management thing, by the way,
is not a project management problem.
It's a decision management problem, right?
Portfolio management
and governance are, is all about decision making.
It's not about projects, it's about decisions.
So the, the domain of, of, uh, research
and knowledge that we need
to draw on is decision science rather than
project management.
And so, you know, one of my colleagues used
to teach at university,
and we've done this with a bunch of organizations
around the world, large and small.
So, you know, we, we, this is what we do all day long,
is this portfolio management stuff.
So the big question is, can portfolio management
fix all of this?
And, and the answer is, it, it, it, it really can, right?
We'll, we'll, we'll see it in action in a minute,
but it's about, you know, aligning your investments,
your projects, and your resources with the goals, right?
So being goals oriented, not projects oriented,
having clear prioritization,
having visibility into the pipeline
and control into the pipeline, being able
to optimize the portfolio.
Um, so that means picking the combination of projects
that maximizes the value, given the shape
of your resources, right?
It's not about just budget.
It's not just how much can we afford?
It's about do we have enough DBAs or enough testers
or enough, you know, whatever your key,
key constraint is, right?
So you have to be able to optimize that portfolio
and then turn that into a capacity plan.
'cause if you're try and deliver everything all at once,
suddenly you've created resource contention.
Again, people are task hopping, you lose your productivity
and projects run late, right?
So, so you're gonna be able to do all of that.
And, and this piece is all about decision science.
And this piece is all about being able
to leverage technology to, to optimize things better.
Uh, and we've got some really cool AI toys
that I'll share with you shortly.
So, um, I encourage you, again,
whether you ever use our software
or not, I encourage you to, to take on the, the case
for change book a case for change,
and, uh, we'll plug you in with one of our, our folks.
Uh, I like doing these case for change, so it may well be me
or one of our partners.
Um, and, uh, uh, we'll, we'll get you
through that, that process.
So let's go look at some software and how to fix it.
Um,
well, that seems,
While you're, uh, question up while holding that up,
Stuart, I just thought maybe I would add just a, um,
an observation of when I was, um, one of the amount of time
that I spent when I was at hp, one of the things
that we spent, the executive spent quite a bit of time on
what I would call dealing with the messy middle,
and I'll just use that term where we would have, um, a list,
a one, we would look at our portfolio, we would try
to make sure that all of our investments fit into multiple
boxes, like things that we're gonna be game changers
or transformative investments in r
and d, um, as well as things that were incremental, things
that kind of were our bread and butter.
And we would allocate a percentage of our portfolio to each
of those different types of categories of projects.
But every quarter we would do
what we would call our waterline, where we had a one
to end list of all the projects that we were working on in
inside of the organization.
And we had a waterline.
And everything that was above
that waterline was, was being done.
Things that were below that waterline were things
that we wanted to do, but we weren't necessarily resourced
or we didn't have the revenue or the ability
to support that investment.
And we probably spent 80% of our time managing
that particular boundary.
And we called it the messy middle,
because things that were clearly
above the waterline were things that were a priority,
and they were being worked on things that were
below the waterline were, were more or less on hold,
but depending on what was going on with the organization,
it was in, it was in that messy middle
that we spent a lot of our time.
But the, the point that I, that I would make
as you're getting this set up is that that was the, the,
that dynamic orderly conversation was where we built
that kind of alignment between the executive team
and the people that were working on the projects.
Because as we well know in field of tech
and certainly what the NHS is doing,
and it's not just a matter of having the static list
of things that you work on
because the world is changing around you as you're executing
that work and people's expectations change,
technology changes, a lot of things occur.
And so you constantly have to, uh,
engage in the what's happening in the here and now,
and what's likely to happen from a risk management point
of view to modify that priority list
and to, um, make adjustments as are necessary.
So I think that that conversation
and that continuous alignment is super important
because a lot of times what will happen is just
what you said, uh, Stewart,
the executives will decide on something
and then they'll say, just go and do it.
And then there's no conversation with the teams of people
that are actually executing that work in a very,
very dynamic environment.
And so constantly being able to reset rere,
reset constantly reconnect is super important.
So, um, and I, I noticed Sharon said in one of her comments
that there were some issues around skills
that we may not always have as project managers.
And so those power skills of being able
to effectively guide sponsorship
and make sure that you've got that connection
and that line of sight and conversation super important
because we can have a lot of different tools,
but it's our capacity as project managers to drive realign,
reestablish, ensure constantly that what we're doing
fits the needs of the priority.
So this tool is fantastic
because it really helps to provide the data
that you will then be able to go
and talk to executives with a clear mind, a clear head,
clear understanding of what's happening,
and be able to have that kind
of conversation in a very professional and competent manner.
So I'm really excited to see this
because I think it often is what people lack is that kind
of data that's compelling enough for executives to look at
and understand the implications of these things.
So I'm really delighted to be here
and really excited to see this actually, Stuart.
Oh gosh, no pressure, right? Uh, fantastic.
Thanks, Luann. Um, so, so here's
what we're gonna go and look at.
We're gonna start actually with that discussion
that Luann was just talking about in the, in the C-suite.
So this is, this is the execs up here, right?
And, um, what we're gonna do is we're gonna take the
business goals, right?
The strategy of the business, if you like,
and we're gonna convert it into something we can
use to drive decisions.
We're gonna convert it into a set of criteria,
and we're gonna weight those criteria using a, a, a, a,
a funky little bit of decision science.
I'll show you in a minute. And then,
and then what we're gonna do is we're,
we're gonna collect a bunch of projects, right?
So projects coming in,
and when projects come in, they're not well defined.
They're, they're usually pretty, pretty loose.
It's normally just a name and a description or something.
So we're gonna take them through a series of steps to
evaluate them, right?
So prioritization, this is really important.
Prioritization is not a meeting,
it's a process, right?
It's a process of evaluating, testing, evaluating,
maybe having multiple stage gates.
So you might do a, a lightweight assessment
and kill some projects here.
And then you might have another stage gate here
where you kill a few more projects,
and eventually you might do a proper resource plan
and all the rest of it,
and then we'll make a final decision, go no go decision.
So, so you need to take projects through a series of steps
to get them ready to be selected.
And as part of that, we're gonna score them against
our criteria, obviously.
And then, and then you get some nice pretty pictures at the
end that tell us which projects are the
good ones and the bad ones.
And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna drop it into ai,
uh, into our little AI engine, uh, which will allow us
to select
and optimize, run a whole bunch of
what if scenarios incredibly quickly to work out to, right?
And that's important precisely luann,
because things change, right?
So, so we've got to be able to respond to that change.
And then from there, once we know which projects we wanna
do, we're gonna lay them out on a timeline.
And again, we're gonna use AI to do that a
because it's a lot quicker, but more importantly,
we're going to use ai.
You know, if you can, instead of this process taking a day,
if you can do it in 10 seconds, it means
that you will do it right?
If it takes you a day to do it,
you're not gonna do it more than, you know, once a month,
once a quarter, something like that.
So again, it's all about being responsive to change
and being able to replan really quickly and,
and to give real transparency to the impact of change
within the portfolio.
So that's, that's what we're gonna do.
Let's go have a look, draw, get rid of that. Come up here.
So we're gonna start off with, uh, we're gonna start off
with, um, uh, criteria.
So why is this important?
Um, Luann, can I ask you at hp Sure.
The CEO, did the CEO have a strategy?
Did they have a clear vision, do you think?
I would say, and, and, and I'm being honest here, I was
so lucky to work at a company like HP where the, uh,
where the importance of that kind of clear strategy
and clear strategic alignment across the organization was a
really important value set.
So I would say yes, um, it was fairly clear.
And one of the things that we kind of measured
or prided ourselves on was if whatever that strategy was,
could you talk to people throughout the organization
and could they repeat it?
And if they could repeat it, then you knew
that it resonated across the organization.
And so the documentation of it, the sharing of it,
and the alignment across the organization,
I felt was really strong.
So I'm one of those lucky people that in my career,
I've had a chance to be in an environment
where I can say the right thing to do was easily observable.
But I know that's not always the case.
In fact, it's rarely the case.
Rarely, Yeah. And so, um, I, uh, it's why, uh, the role
that we play is so critically important
because we constantly have to bring that information back
to people who may not realize that
what they say hasn't really percolated
through the organization
and doesn't have the kind of understanding
that they expect or think.
So I would say I was lucky in that sense,
and as an executive myself, that was something
that we chose to do.
But the power of that is incredibly important.
So if you're in a role that allows you to do that,
it's critically important.
But I recognize that's probably not the case for 80% of us.
And, and I'd suggest the number's more like 90, 95%.
'cause there was a recent study, there
Was a recent I'm an optimist. Yeah,
Yeah, no, well, there was a recent, the reason I say
that is there was a, a recent study, um, that,
that polled people across organizations
and 95%
of people in organizations could not articulate
the strategy at all.
And, uh, so that, that's a real challenge.
Um, but even within the boardroom, right?
So the CEO very often has a fairly clear vision
and Strat, you know, idea of what they want to achieve.
But around the board table, right?
You might have 10 people,
and from those 10 people,
you'll have 10 different interpretations of
that strategy, right?
They won't all have the same understanding of what
that strategy translates into.
And when you go the next level down,
it gets even worse, right?
Because they, you know, the, the,
so you'll then you've got lots of people
who are working within their stovepipe, right?
And they only care about my particular division
or my particular product,
and they, they're, they're, they're not thinking about the,
the, the overall goals.
And what this means for the PMO is that all
of these powerful people are advocating for their projects
based on their interpretation of what the strategy is,
or at least their piece of it.
And that's why prioritization is so difficult,
because there isn't actually agreement
between the leadership team on what the strategy,
how the strategy should be interpreted
and turned into a decision framework.
So that, so this is where we use a bit of decision science.
This is called a HP analytic hierarchy process.
Luann, you've prob you may have come
across that in the literature.
Yes, absolutely.
Um, so, so in
and around, um, project prioritization in,
in complex organizations, a HP is is king, right?
This is the way that it should be done.
So what you basically do is you, you take the business goals
and you turn them into a set of criteria.
And those criteria are naturally hierarchical.
So, you know, your strategic goals,
you break them down into lower level goals.
So if you are, if you're a okay, fingers on keyboards,
please, I'm gonna ask you a question.
I want you all to pretend that you are a, uh,
a business manager and you're requesting a project.
And on the project request form, there's a field that says,
does your project support our strategy?
What answer are you gonna give to that question?
There we go. Our shocks straight in there.
Yeah, nobody's gonna say no to that, right?
So that's not useful. That's not useful.
So you have to break it down a little bit further
and say, okay, not, not, do you support this,
but what, what contribution does your project make
to these elements of our strategy to these,
these components of our strategy?
And so you build, you build this, this, uh, a model
for scoring, and you might include risk,
and you might include technical fit,
and you might include all kinds of things, right?
That, that represent how you think of the world.
And then the crucial step is you bring the executives
together to weight the criteria.
Now, in a traditional world,
what you would do is you'd write those criteria up on the
whiteboard and you say, criteria number one,
what weight should we put on that?
And, um, uh,
and the, um, the CEO will will turn around
and say, 23.7%.
Okay? Now there are two problems with that. Number.
First, she just made it up, right?
Um, that's, that's the first problem.
Uh, and there's loads of
psychology research that backs that up.
By the way, if anybody doesn't believe me, uh, secondly,
now everyone's sitting around the, around the table
is thinking, what's, you know,
what's really going through their head?
They're not really thinking about what the weight should be.
What they're really thinking is, well, it's not 23.7%.
I don't think it's 23.7%,
but I've only had one cup of coffee this morning,
so I'm not ready to do battle with the CEO.
So you move on to the next,
the next criteria, and same thing happens.
Next criteria, same thing happens.
So by the end of the meeting, the only thing
that everyone's agreed on,
but nobody actually says, is that the, the weight
of the criteria is wrong.
The scoring model you've just built is wrong.
And so when you, so, so if that's the case,
there's absolutely no point moving
forward in scoring projects.
Because any work that you do in scoring projects,
people will just look at those scores
and go, I don't believe them.
I'm just gonna go into battle anyway, the same old way.
And you're back to he who shouts loudest and horse trading.
So the decision science helps fix this.
This is this, this is a HP at work.
So the idea is we never ask
what weight should we put on a criterion?
Instead, we present pairs of criteria A and B,
and we say, which one is more important?
And is it a little bit more important or a lot?
So what this is doing is it's forcing the team, and,
and you do this as a team sport, right?
So it's forcing the team to think, right?
It's forcing them to make difficult decisions about what,
how we're going to interpret and execute our strategy.
Because you have to make trade-offs in business
and in government and in life generally, right?
And so this is us agreeing the rules on
how we're gonna make those trade-offs.
Now notice we're not talking about projects right now.
So nobody's project is at risk.
We're talking about the business goals.
We're talking about, you know, so,
so the guy in sales over here, right?
We say, well, can you explain your point of view?
And he says, yeah, well, you know, there's the,
these five new competitors, the new technology come out,
we're gonna get killed if we don't do this, right?
If we don't solve this problem.
And the manufacturing guy sits over here
and his jaw's on the floor.
'cause he knew none of that. He thought all
that the sales guy did was take people out for lunch
and play golf, right?
And so, so he's sitting there going, oh, I didn't know that.
And maybe he's, maybe he changes his, his vote,
but then we can say, well,
can you explain your point of view?
And says, yeah, yeah, but we've got all this new legislation
coming down where we have to put in place safety protocols
and environmental protocols
and all these things if we're gonna keep our factories open.
And this guy goes, oh, I didn't know any of that.
So what's, what this is doing is it's forcing them outta
their individual kind of worldview outta their stove pipes
and forcing them to have a really good conversation about
what do we want to achieve as a business
and what are the trade-offs we're willing
to make or that we need to make?
And usually they walk away from that meeting with a really
strong, you know, we've had customers say things like,
this is the first time we
as a leadership team have been aligned,
or finally we're having the conversation we should
have had years ago.
Um, and as a PMO, this is a really big win
because first of all, you've just added value
to the leadership team.
And secondly, you've now got a model.
'cause the software, you know, takes the answers
to all these questions and turns it into a weighted, uh,
a weighted criteria model.
So you've now got a, a set of criteria, weights
that you can use to score projects.
Does that make sense? Luann? Does that, does that,
Yeah, I, I'm just shaking my head and reminiscing
because I think the point, um, what's so critically, um,
visible here using a HP
and others is just to be able to build alignment.
'cause you're exactly right. People come in with a,
a very narrow understanding,
maybe based on their functional area
or what they believe to be important
based on what they know.
And if this executives
truly do crave making better decisions faster,
that is really something that they take pride in.
But if the data that they're using
to make those decisions is deficient or flawed,
or not well aligned within the leadership team,
it's not surprising that the way that trickles down
to the rest of the organization is unclear.
So this makes, um, a really great case for if nothing else,
it's just really bringing them their,
their thinking together
and appreciating the different perspectives
that come from the different members of that executive team,
and building a more holistic understanding
of what's critically important,
which can then ultimately drive the, the prioritization
of the work to be done.
So this is very useful.
Awesome. And,
and it's also, uh, I mean we've had, we've had exec teams
who decided that we were gonna share this with, uh,
with kind of the next tier down.
And they, they, they, one I'm thinking of in particular,
they actually held a town hall meeting for all the mid,
mid managers to kind of say, Hey, we've just done this thing
and we thought you might be interested
and we're gonna use it to prioritize your projects.
And when they put this up on the screen, there was a riot.
And, and they, they had to stop the meeting
because everyone in, everyone in the middle
of the organization said,
we have never seen anything like this before.
And finally, you were communicating your strategy in terms
that we can action, right?
That we can turn into decisions and actions.
And they had to stop the meeting and go
and print out 50 version, 50 slides, you know, 50 versions
of this amazing, so that people could take it away
and do some stuff with it.
So, so this is really powerful.
'cause not only does, can we use this
to prioritize projects,
but we can also kind of say, well, you know, tell you
what we've got, um, you know,
let's say this quarter we're gonna focus on this criterion.
And so we can actually use that now to drive, uh,
to drive ideation.
So we can create ourselves a nice little ideation page.
Let's open it in a separate tab. Oh, let's get rid of that.
So we can, we can have our own little ideation page
where you say, great, this month
or this quarter, we're gonna focus on this,
this particular criteria.
So give us all, you know, we want every department
to give us three ideas for how we can move the needle on
that thing that's important to us.
Now, compare that with the normal way that,
that people request projects, right?
People, people kind of grum, you know, something goes wrong.
Well, I'll have a project fix that, right?
I'll request a project that's not strategic,
that's react, that's reactive.
Now we're being strategic, we're using the strategy
to drive the ideation.
So, so we end up
Questions for just a quick question.
Yeah, yeah. Um, I think that Jim asked this in the,
in the chat, and so I'm curious myself, um, I,
I would assume that in this particular case,
a PMO leader is, is facilitating this conversation
with the executives using this as a tool to help them
to, to make this.
It's, is that, is that who would be the, is that
how the process would work?
Yeah. Yeah. So if you remember this picture,
so this bit up here, this is the executive team.
And you would typically do this once a year, no more.
You don't need to do it anymore than that.
Um, maybe twice if things are
changing really, really quickly.
But your strategy shouldn't be changing that quickly, right?
So, so you would typically do this once a year, um,
and then, and then you're collecting projects,
continuously scoring projects.
And then when you get to the end
and you've got nice little pictures, um, you know, this is,
this is in your portfolio board meeting.
So depending on your organization, that might be monthly
or quarterly or something like that.
So this is where we're making decisions about, uh,
and, and all the AI stuff.
This all belongs in the, in the portfolio board box, right?
So, so this is, this is the bit that you're doing monthly
or quarterly with the portfolio board
where you're making decisions about which projects to do
and what resources to allocate and so on and so forth.
So there's sort of three separate processes.
There's a, an a roughly an annual process, kind
of a continuous process of projects coming in
and being assessed, and then your, your governance boards
where you're, you're making the decisions.
Great. Thank you. Great question.
And, and you know, executives, this is mostly PMO
and subject matter experts.
So you'll, you'll see that in a minute.
And then this obviously is whoever's on the, the,
the governance board.
Um, fantastic. Let's do that. Okay.
Um, so your projects come in, people fill in that,
that ideation form, project request form,
and it drops into this Kanban, right?
And the idea, if you remember, we had that pipeline
where you're, you're evaluating projects as they go along.
So each tile is a project
and we, we kind of move it along from step to step.
So whatever your governance process flow is, uh,
or evaluation flow, these columns would reflect those,
those different steps.
And you can edit them and make them your own.
You know, you just jump in here and you just edit it
through a user interface through the gui.
Um, and as you're going through here,
you're collecting data.
So we have these things called notifications.
So when a project drops into, uh, into this bucket,
for example, where you're adding the business case, then,
you know, it might send an email to the business, to the,
to the project sponsor and say, Hey dude,
can you fill in this form, please?
And the data just automatically gets added.
So you're not sending emails with little bits of information
and trying to update spreadsheets
and forgetting which version of the spreadsheet you're in.
Um, everything's in a tool with an audit trail.
And, uh, and as part of that, you know, some step in the,
uh, some stage in the process when it's appropriate,
you can actually go in
and get down to the level of, you know,
what, what are the benefits?
What's the revenue that this
project's gonna drive over time?
What resources do we need to deliver it, you know, by team,
month by month, how much do we need to spend on consultants
or whatever to support it, CapEx, et cetera.
So you end up with kind of a little mini profit
and loss statement for the project, right?
Which is kind of cool. Executives like that we're,
so we're now talking about a business case.
That's actually a business case, right?
It's not a project case, it's a business case.
Uh, which is, which is really powerful.
Now, at some point on this journey,
we're going to score our projects.
And here's the thing. If you're doing this at any kind
of scale, um, uh, you have
a bit of a mess on your hands today probably,
'cause you've got a spreadsheet and you've got all sorts
of people sending you information, you're trying
to put it in the spreadsheet and keep everything straight.
Uh, and it's a bit of a nightmare.
Now, here's the thing is that you,
you want your technical people
to be scoring the technical aspects of the project.
So you want project manager
or something evaluating the, the delivery risk.
You want finance people evaluating the finance criteria.
You want the, the business people evaluating
the strategic impact.
You don't want the project manager
evaluating the strategic impact of the project
'cause they don't know anything about it, right?
That's not their job. So what we do is we allow you to kind
of, it's like a, it's, uh, to, to create little panels
of people who have, uh, subject matter experts
who score the different aspects of the project.
So you might have, um,
you might have a strategy person in Europe
who does all the European projects
and a strategy person in North America
who does all the North American projects and so on.
So you're always getting people scoring projects, um,
who actually know something about it.
And when they, when they go in to score them,
let's have a look at this one, this one will be fun.
Um, really what you're doing is this is the project name.
Uh, this is the criterion that we're scoring it against.
And you can click on there and it'll give you
details about the project.
And there's a whole bunch of decision science.
Goodness, this, this page is so dense with decision science
and you won't even notice.
Um, things like, from the way
that we we've structured the scales is driven by the,
the research into what works.
The fact that you've got these nice descriptions is driven
by the, the research into what works.
The fact that we're having multiple people scoring projects
whenever possible is driven by the fact that, um,
people are biased, individuals are biased,
and we're also little random noise generators.
And by having a process where you get people
to vote independently,
and then you say, gee, can you explain your point of view?
Can you explain your point of view?
You're balancing out those biases
and you're reducing the randomness.
We're gonna that random noise.
So when you take the average, you, you collapse
that, that randomness.
So you're getting better data.
So we're collecting it more easily, right?
With less headache and we're getting better data.
So this is all building trust so that when we get
to the point where we're, we're actually looking at, um,
uh, we're looking at the projects that are,
that are potentially in the pipeline, um, we have, uh,
something that looks like this.
Um, so these are my, um,
I thought I'd cleaned those out before we started.
Let's just go over here and do that really quickly.
Um, so these are all the projects that are, um,
available to us.
So I'm just gonna add them all back in. There we go.
And then we'll come over here.
Alright, so these are the projects that are available to us.
And what you can see, let's just make that a little smaller.
What we can see is, um, on, on this one,
we've got the value, uh, which is basically the score.
So we have criteria and we scored
projects against the criteria.
So this score represents how well aligned,
what contribution does this project make to our strategy,
to our business goals.
Uh, and this is cost along the bottom.
So top left, these are projects that are good.
We like these projects down here.
These are projects that are bad.
We don't want to do these projects, right?
So it's super clear where the good projects are,
where the bad projects are.
We've also got this view.
This is, this is something we stole from, uh,
from the portfolio management theory, portfolio theory.
And the idea is it's called the efficient frontier.
So the idea is that, um, uh, what we're trying to do,
you mentioned earlier, Luann,
that we don't actually have one portfolio.
You have multiple portfolios.
You've got your run the business portfolio,
grow the business portfolio, transform the business.
You've got your North America portfolio,
you've got your IT portfolio,
you've got all these different portfolios,
and for each one of them, you would end up
with this kind of efficient frontier.
So what what this tells us is,
if I spend 50 million euros on this portfolio,
I'm gonna get this much value, right?
That's nice. The next 50 million I spend,
I'm gonna get this much value.
The next 50 million, I'm only gonna get
this much and so on, right?
So we're getting less
and less value each time we spend another 50 million, right?
So we're getting into diminishing returns.
Um, this is Pareto's law, the 80 20 rule,
whatever you, whatever you call it.
So this is, this is really powerful.
So first of all, it's powerful for a couple
of reasons within this portfolio.
We can now ask the question, how much should we spend?
So if we do everything, let's say you're in the IT portfolio
and people tend to use the language like, oh,
it's a must do project, right?
And as a result, they all get done.
So, so we could do them all and we could spend $300 million
or Euros dollars in this case,
or we could drop, pull it back
and we could do, say we could spend 70% of that
and we're still getting 93% of the value, right?
So we're not losing much value,
but we're freeing up a lot of resource to go
and do the business projects,
which are the ones the execs really care about.
So what this is doing is if you imagine you've got,
you know, this is, this is your IT portfolio,
and this is, so these are all your database upgrades
and all that kind of stuff,
and this is your business portfolio.
What of often happens is you end up doing so much of this
for compliance and, um, you know, keep the lights on,
reasons that you only have a little bit
of resource left in this portfolio.
So if we, if we back this off to here, right?
We lose a bit of value, but not much.
But if we take that resource and move it over here, right?
We've just doubled how much value
we're getting in the portfolio that we really care about,
which is the, you know, the grow the business or transform.
So for our friends in the NHS on this call, you know,
you guys are about to get slammed with the mother
of tsunamis, right?
Project tsunamis as, as all the changes come in.
Um, so, so it's understanding, you know, how do we,
how do we allocate, how do we get more, deliver more of
that change agenda, which is what we really care about.
This is what's gonna drive patient care in the NHS,
for example, without leaving ourselves open
to too much risk in the IT portfolio.
So we, by putting numbers on this stuff,
we can actually drive real decisions, um, uh,
amongst the leadership team.
So let's figure out,
this is telling us which projects are most attractive,
let's overlay now the resources.
So these, these are the resources
that we have available to do the work.
And I pressed that button,
and in about a second,
what the software actually did was it ran hundreds
or possibly even thousands.
I've seen it run about three, three
and a half thousand scenarios.
Um, hunting for the portfolio
that delivers the most value, right?
So it's managed to find one where, you know,
we're just a little bit over capacity on this,
but close enough, right?
We're, we're, we're within a a margin of error
and it's figured out that the portfolio,
the best portfolio it can find, having simulated hundreds
of them, thousands of them potentially, is one
that's gonna deliver, you know, 1400 value points
and a thousand, uh, a thousand, uh, uh, sorry, uh, uh, uh,
uh, billion dollars of new revenue.
And we can see really clearly that our developers are the,
are the, are the bottleneck.
So what would happen if we went in
and added a few more developers, right?
Let's make it 120 and just see what happens, right?
So, so there we go.
We've just added another a hundred million of revenue just
by adding 10 more developers, right?
Probably slightly unrealistic numbers, but you get the idea.
So being able to run these what if scenarios super,
super quickly and give the leadership team visibility
into what the impact of that is, is, is tremendous.
Um, and, and of course there's always, there's always,
you know, an executive's always gonna say, yeah, yeah,
but you've got to do this project
and you've got to do this project 'cause I'm clever than you
and I know, right?
So that's great. What, what impact does it have?
Well, let's see. Right?
So normally when the execs say, what impact would
that have you go, you have to go away
and spend a week with your spreadsheet figuring it out.
Now we can answer it in the meeting on demand when they and,
and just run these what if scenarios
and each time know
that we're optimizing the portfolio afterwards.
So that gives you tremendous power in that, that meeting.
Um, so once we've done that, the next thing that we want
to do usually is look across portfolios.
'cause your resources usually are supporting multiple
portfolios, especially if you're in it, right?
It supports everything
that goes on in most organizations these days.
So you have shared resources.
So these are our portfolios,
and what we've done is we've allocated resource
to those different portfolios and, uh,
and so now, uh, a a a percentage of the resource,
so basically what we're doing there is we're doing
that balancing between portfolios that we talked about.
So if you remember, um, we had these,
these two pictures, right?
So what we've said is we're gonna take, you know,
so we started with most of our resources here,
we're gonna ramp that one back
and we're gonna move this one from here
and move it to there, right?
So that, that's what what I was just showing you down below.
So you can, you can do that on this screen
and start moving those resources around.
And then what we want to do is figure out how we would
turn that into a portfolio plan.
So Luann, if you were, if, do you have,
do you have a feel you're maybe a bit too senior,
you've been been away from the coalface for a while,
but do you have a feel for how long it would
take you to work out?
What order should I do my projects in
so I don't overload your people?
Oh gosh. You know, that's a really great question.
And I would say that there was, what we were lucky
to have is a lot of people with a lot of familiarity,
but based on judgment, you know, based on our experience
and our judgment to be able to make that sort of assertion.
But this is fantastic
because it really presents it in a much,
much more objective way.
So I think one of your items was bias busting, right?
You know, I think that people have a bias
around their knowledge and their experience, and so it,
but that doesn't always translate into perfect decisions.
And so this really helps to, um, make that very, very clear
and, and to be able to, uh, as you suggest,
it's like it's data.
It's not about people's opinions.
It's about something that you can actually make an
objective decision based on.
So I would say it would've taken us quite a long time,
and it would've had multiple conversations
and probably months, um, months to be able
to really understand that at some level
of detail at that time.
And this is in almost instantaneous.
And so it gives you an opportunity to play a lot of
what if analysis, like you said,
cha changing resource allocation, what does that mean?
And, um, it gives you instantaneous ability
to have conversations, which is really
where the value is about
what then are you gonna do with this?
Um, but it object makes it objective
and it reduces that bias, which I think is tremendous.
Absolutely. And, and thank you for that.
So, so while you were talking there,
I pressed a little blue button
and what, so the, the, the challenge
that we're we have now is how do we lay
that out on a timeline?
And you'll see in, in, and it just took a few seconds.
It, it ran through 24,000 scenarios
and it found 13,000 that, that, that worked.
And here's the best one, right?
So we, we can look at the, the, the sequence.
So this is the sequence in which we should deliver our
projects in order to maximize the flow, right?
To minimize overload, to minimize hotspots.
And, and traditionally in a PPM tool
or something, right, you would be doing, you would sit there
and you would start moving projects, right?
You'd say, well, I'll put that one there.
Oh no, I've got a hotspot in July.
So I'd move it and move a project to August.
Okay, that's great. But now we've broken September,
so now I move another project.
I fixed September, but I've broken May. Right?
And, and you, it's like playing whack-a-mole, right?
It's never ending whack-a-mole.
Trying to find a sequence of projects that actually
doesn't overload our people.
Yeah. Well, and putting 'em all together in one place.
It's just fantastic to see it all in one.
Absolutely. And, and again, this is one view,
and this is taking account
of resources across multiple portfolios.
And so I can very quickly go in and,
and look at, you know, the original portfolio we were in
and just see that view and just see, okay, what does
that mean for my portfolio?
And the really cool thing about this is that this is then,
uh, this then translates into, uh, if I can come right back
to, to where we started, um, uh,
this translates into a profit
and loss forecast for the business.
Or if you're the, if you're the NHS
or a government body, it's showing you an income versus
income versus outgoing.
Uh, and, you know, what are the benefits
that we're, that, that we're getting?
Um, uh, uh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Andy, um, uh, you know, you can set all of this up
and you can kind of define what you know to, to a degree,
what, what the rules are of
how you do depreciation and things like that.
So there, there's, there's a bit
of configuration behind the scenes.
But the important thing here, I have
A sort Yeah, go ahead.
Just a quick question. So yeah, one thing that, that this,
that you've really done an an excellent job of being able
to show kind of what the sensitivity is
of resource allocation by project and so forth.
Where else do you, um,
do you envision incorporating other kinds of risks
that would 'cause, 'cause this provides us with a lot
of data, but what other risk, um,
analysis gets factored into this to understand
what the overall impact is
of these decisions on the planned
outcomes for the portfolio?
Great, great question.
So, so what you can, what you, so there's a couple
of things, actually, two, two levels.
One is the outcomes of the portfolio.
So one of the things that you can do is you can keep
asking the question
of the team while the project's going on,
how confident are you in,
uh, in these outcomes?
And so you end up with a risk adjusted view of the portfolio
of the, of the outcomes.
Mm-hmm. Uh, that lets you kind of say, okay, well, you know,
I know we said we were gonna get a hundred million dollars
in revenue, but actually, you know,
something's changed while we've been doing it
and we think it's only gonna be 30 now, right?
Right. So, so you can do that.
Um, you can also score risks.
So you can actually use this to do, for example, to,
to do enterprise risk management.
So you can look across the enterprise
and say, what are the risks in the business,
the systemic risks that we carry in the business?
And then prioritize that
and come up with your mitigation strategies
and then integrate the, integrate those mm-hmm.
Effectively as projects within the portfolio, right?
So usually enterprise risk management is done over there
somewhere, right?
There's someone that does that,
but it's not connected to anything else.
It's not connected to your strategy,
and it's not connected to the
resources and the implementation.
Um, right. So, so you can, so you can involve that,
so you can include that in the, in the,
in the system as well.
Excellent question. Um, so, so, you know, we've, we've,
we've done a big loop here, right?
So we've, we've gone round, we've looked at, um, you know,
the prioritization piece, how to optimize
and select the portfolio, um,
uh, and, and so on.
Um, so are there any questions?
We we're pretty much at the top of the hour actually.
We're just a little, little over the top of the hour.
So any questions from anybody?
Uh, and if not, uh, I'm, I'm gonna give the, the, the,
the last word to Luann, um, you know, on the scale from
stinky banana to superhero, where,
where, where do you put this?
And how would you, how would you, uh, how,
how might this have changed your life at, at hp?
Well, I have to give it superhero duck status,
so a duck with a cape.
So, um, um,
I'm really just absolutely fascinated by this.
And I can tell you that had I had such a thing like this,
I mean, it's been quite some time since I was doing this
type of work, it would've made a huge difference.
And I have to say that the,
as I probably we all experience, is that the hardest thing
to do is to build that kind of aligned mindset around data
that is objective and clear,
because we all wanna make better decisions faster that lead
to more and more positive outcomes.
Executives wanna do the same thing
because you never get that time
or those resources back if you, if you make a decision, uh,
that is, is unqualified in many ways.
And so this puts it in the cold light of day.
It just really shares all of the different aspects,
and it gives you an opportunity to kind of play around
with different potential scenarios
to say, what if we did this?
Or what if we did that? But you get
to see the entire holistic set
of information all in one view,
but it also aligns everybody's thinking.
So it removes that bias, it removes that, um, well,
I've done it this way 25 times before, and so there,
therefore I know because executives are guilty of that
because they're paid because of the decision making judgment
that they've had in the past.
But that doesn't necessarily always translate to
where we are today or where we're headed in the future.
And then what it also does, which I find really compelling,
is how it knits together that myth, messy middle.
So if there's this strategic conversation that use, uh,
everyone's aligned around what those criteria are,
what should drive decision making,
but if the people that are doing that work don't understand
that, that in, in the same way,
and they're off executing their projects,
wouldn't you like them to also have, when they get
to a fork in the road and they need to make decision X
or decision Y, that the decision
that they're making is aligned with
that same set of criteria.
Um, and that it, it, i, it really helps to cascade
through the organization that first of all,
that clear understanding, but then it enables
and empowers people to make better decisions.
And when they, in their own work, in their own projects,
see things that are kind of in that lower left hand,
not very, um, attractive projects, they can also bring
that forward and say, Hey,
this is not really working out well.
Maybe we should be considering translating some
of these resources into other higher value projects
because this project
that we're working on isn't necessarily gonna deliver the
value to the organization
that the executives are looking for.
So it gives people an, an opening
to having a conversation about their own projects
and not just heads down doing the work,
but really understanding how that work applies
and aligns with everything else
that you're trying to accomplish.
And I think that's what we need
to empower our project managers to do more
of leading those conversations, leading with data, leading
with insights, and saying, here's where we are.
And, and, and really driving that sponsorship process
with the executives
because they may be like out of sight, out of mind,
and think everything is going fine,
but the more we can actually bring this information
into the conversation and to really help steer
and guide what's happening around us in a very dynamic way,
the more strategic contribution that we're gonna be making.
So I love this.
I love the, uh, the quality of the, the data, the insights,
the way it's presented,
and how it can be really meaningful in helping
to just drive better decisions,
but build that kind of common alignment
and understanding among all of the people that are involved.
So, um, definitely a red cape
and, uh, um, a magic wand.
Great job, Stewart. Thank you for inviting me
to be here today.
Well, Luanne, thank you for joining.
I really do appreciate it.
Um, Luanne was not paid for any of that, by the way, folks.
Uh, uh, so I'm very grateful to have you have you join.
Um, so, uh,
before we end, just two, two really quick things.
First one is, um, I, I hadn't spotted
that Harry Max was on here.
Harry wrote a book, I think it came out about a year, year
and a half ago on prioritization, not just in projects,
but in your life and your work life and everything else.
Superbook, go grab a copy. Uh, it's a good lead.
Harry has lots of experience in this domain
and is something
of a superstar out in Silicon Valley, worth a read.
Um, and, uh,
and then the other thing is that I want to do is just,
I just wanna acknowledge Luanne,
and not just your contribution today,
but your contribution to the community
and to the evolution away from triple constraints
to value centric and all this kind of good stuff.
Um, a lot
of this wouldn't have happened without Lu
Ann's contribution to the community.
So, um, if you can just big thumbs up, clap round
of applause for Luanne just to say thank you
for everything you've done for the community.
We really appreciate you. Thank
You.
And what you guys do matters. So please be the, the leader.
Light the way for all of us.
'cause every project you work on, sometimes it's super hard,
but you matter.
Everything you do matters. And we appreciate you so much.
So thank you for all you do
and persevering through some of these kinds of challenges.
And with tools like this, it just makes you even more
and more of a strategic asset
to the organizations you're a part of.
So thank you for all you do.
Beautiful. Thank you everybody,
and thanks for joining us today.
Watch out for the next webinar,
which is gonna be Hebert Al Shahi.
Uh, the only person ever so far to have won two PMO Leader
of the Year award, uh, gongs from the PMO Global Alliance.
Uh, Heba has a new book out on leadership, uh,
particularly written for, specifically written for PMOs.
Um, and I have a copy of it right here.
Um, and so we're gonna be talking about leadership,
so watch out for the for the next webinar.
And I hope to see you all there.
Luann a million. Thanks. Thanks again.
Thanks for inviting me. Thanks
Everyone.