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PPM: Align IT Resources to Improve Project Throughput
Jeff Monteforte believes that project portfolio management (PPM) is the “single most essential IT governance control that can improve a tarnished image for the IT department”, and for good reason. PPM allows managers to see a rolling scope of projects, how they work together, and how to distribute team members between them. Out of all of those benefits, resource optimization is perhaps the most intriguing:
Common sense will tell you if you place the skills and resources that best match the needs of a project, said project will be completed as fast as possible and with the best possible quality. Unfortunately, in the fluid business environment that IT departments must function, this “perfect” allocation of resources to projects is virtually impossible to achieve.
The next best option””and an option that is achievable””is to construct a resource management control process that endeavors to maintain an optimized resource-to-project distribution.
So, as Monteforte explains, it’s a dance between getting the best people on the project while also making sure you only have the needed amount of people working ““ thereby reducing project bloat and keeping costs down. This can be assisted by a “master schedule” which shows an 18 month period of planned projects, who will be working on them, and the priority of each.
