Well history tells us that the management of portfolios, programmes and projects (P3M) are far more complex than we give them credit for. I have often used Chaos Theory as a metaphor to demonstrate this. Look at the diagram below and how all the sixteen variables impact each other (of course in P3M we deal with more than these). Imagine a small change in one of the variables in the diagram below and how that can affect the other variables. Now imagine some of the larger changes to multiple variables and you can begin to see why P3M is so complex to manage and why ultimately the majority of projects fall well below par.

You can probably relate to this if you,

• are in a delivery role?
• deal with multiple suppliers?
• have to deal with this complexity every day?
• understand just how stressful this can be.

So with all of this complexity to manage where do you even start your reflection and how can you turn your reflection into something measurable?

At The Grangeside Group (TGG) we have developed an agile improvement process model that helps you and us firstly reflect and secondly frame the problem and hence determine where you are now and where you want to be on your road to P3M performance improvement. We then open our knowledge library so we can agree your own organisational road map with its own milestones to help you monitor your improvement,

Step 1 on the process is to frame what is important to you, where you currently are and an initial look at where you really want to be in terms of your prioritised list.

So, if this current situation has given you the opportunity of time, why not use this time to reflect, take a look at how you could benefit from at least a 20% improvement in your P3M performance? If this is of interest let us know and we can explain in more detail how we WILL help you achieve this ready for when we all need to hit the ground running again and we lose this opportunity for reflection. We are offering use of our P3M maturity model to organisations during the next 3 months free of charge. If this is something you feel could benefit you, get in touch and we will discuss the criteria to assess suitability for your organisation.

Phil Urwin (MA, MBA, FAPM) is a Managing Partner at TGG, has over thirty-five years P3M experience, is a Fellow of APM and speaks at conferences around the world.