#159 | Navigating the Complex World of Enterprise Portfolio Management with Ryan Chaffey

The battle for PMO relevance has never been more challenging. In this essential conversation, we explore what it takes to make enterprise portfolio management successful beyond frameworks and templates. Our guest, Ryan Chaffey, Divisional Manager of the Enterprise PMO at Yarra Valley Water, brings a powerful perspective to the discussion, drawing on his extensive background in steering strategic planning, portfolio management, and governance frameworks across various industries, including Telecommunications, Financial Services, Entertainment, Education, and the Public Sector.

Ryan shares his journey from Chartered Accountant to PMO leader, explaining how his financial expertise, reinforced by his CPA and PMP certifications, naturally bridges the gap between strategy, finance, and delivery. We unpack his "Holy Trinity" concept of alignment, explore why organisations often struggle with benefits realisation (hint: 90% a cultural problem), and examine the political realities of project prioritisation and the essential role of psychological safety in governance frameworks.

Beyond his leadership at Yarra Valley Water, Ryan has spent three years leading the AIPM PMO Community of Practice, working to establish it as the premier PMO network in Australia, recognised for delivering high-quality professional development content. His wealth of experience in capital budgeting, strategic planning, and enterprise portfolio management shines through as we delve into practical insights, such as "Minimum Viable Governance," overcoming capability gaps in PPM tool rollouts, and building accountability systems that genuinely work. Whether you’re establishing a PMO, revitalising one, or seeking to connect portfolios to business outcomes better, this episode delivers real-world strategies you can apply immediately. Connect with Ryan Chaffey on LinkedIn to continue learning from his expertise across multiple transformation contexts.

In this episode, we discuss: 

• 0:00 Personal Life and Work Updates
• 14:03 Ryan's Journey to PMO Leadership
• 21:15 Communicating PMO Value to Executives
• 27:06 Turning Strategy into Actionable Programs
• 32:10 Benefits Realisation Challenges
• 38:49 Project Prioritisation and Governance
• 44:45 Stopping Proje

Transcript

Introduction to Ryan Chafee

Speaker 2 0:00

You're listening to Agile Ideas, the podcast hosted by Fatima Rabuchi. Hi everyone and welcome back to another episode of Agile Ideas. I'm Fatima, ceo at Agile Management Office, mental Health Ambassador and your host. On today's episode, I am speaking to Ryan Chafee.

Speaker 2 0:22

Ryan is the Divisional Manager of the enterprise PMO at Yarra Valley Water and he has a strong background in enterprise portfolio management. He's skilled in strategically steering the planning and execution of initiatives to help executives translate strategic roadmaps into established programs of work that deliver optimal value to organizations. Ryan is experienced in portfolio and EPMO management, value and benefits of realization, strategic planning and capital budgeting, as well as governance frameworks and approaches, and we're going to talk through all of that and more. He's held senior roles in telecommunication, financial services, entertainment, education and the public sector, and for the last three years, ryan led the AIPM PMO community of practice, which was known for delivering valuable professional development content and opportunities, as well as being a certified practicing accountant and a project management professional.

Speaker 2 1:20

In today's episode, we speak with Ryan about his journey from finance to becoming a PMO expert, discussing the synergies between financial management and project governance, as well as highlighting the challenges and best practices in PMO functions across different industries, the importance of executive alignment and the evolving nature of PMOs. Ryan also delves into the effectiveness of prioritization and doing it well, cultural aspects of stopping projects, which we don't do enough of, and the critical role of change management. This episode is perfect, though, for those aspiring to be a PMO leader or already is a project management professional. This episode is packed with actionable insights and advice, so please join me in welcoming Ryan to the show. Ryan, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 2:16

Lovely to be here.

Journey from Finance to PMO Leadership

Speaker 2 2:17

Thank you for coming here. I know we have been talking about talking for a while, so it's good that we're finally doing it. I know there's probably a lot we're going to talk through and I'm just keen, before we get into sort of some of the specific areas of expertise that I know you'll bring today, tell us a little bit about your backstory, like how did you get to where you are today, to what you're doing? How did you fall into project management governance, all that? Tell us a little, spend a few minutes telling us about that. How do you fall into project management governance, all that?

Speaker 1 2:46

Tell us a little, spend a few minutes telling us about that.

Speaker 1 2:47

Yeah, so my background is I'm a chartered accountant and, you know, 15, 20 years ago I was very much in finance-centric roles management, accounting, finance management and an opportunity came up with the organisation I was working with to kind of work in a PMO and there's definitely a lot of synergies between financial management and the skillset around financial management to move into a governance role.

Speaker 1 3:10

And what I really was excited about is the broad depth of how a PMO operates and the opportunities to help shape a PMO, leveraging some of those finance skills. You know I've been portfolio management roles, I've had leadership roles, setting up pmos and establishing best practice capability, and what really excites me about being the pmo function is I get to take the story around the numbers and add a lot of color to them because you know, as pmo professionals, we don't just look at the numbers, we'll look at scope, we'll look at time, we'll get, we'll look at benefits and we bring all that time. We'll look at benefits and we bring all that together and I think, you know, I think PMO functions can add a heck of a lot of value to their finance counterparts and it was just it's really exciting space to be in because it's multifaceted and, you know, very, very unique.

PMOs Across Different Industries

Speaker 2 4:00

And when you so you started your accounting journey, which I think the most, probably the most valuable skill outside of you know, communication and leadership is the financials. I always sort of say to people, if you're trying to sort of specialise in a particular area, in projects and PMO land, it's like the finances are the most powerful. So I think you're at an advantage having that lens In terms of like you're moving from. You know, in the first organisation. You've now moved across different industries. Have you found that the PMO landscape across industries is fairly similar? What are the kind of characteristics, that sort of change as you move industry?

Speaker 1 4:39

Yeah, so, having worked in a lot of sectors, I think there's definitely a lot of parallels between the PMO and portfolio management function in a lot of the different sectors, although how I've found PMOs across different functions, their service offering does depend on the type of organization. Obviously, it's a public sector organization, there's more regulatory considerations. If it's a private sector organization, it's more profit and shareholder led. And I think one of the things that I've found is there's definitely some common challenges. You know, bringing the information up for insights to exec is always a common challenge. Lifting project management maturity is a common challenge. And to do all that and I guess one of the other things that I've realized is, you know, pmos and EPMOs need to constantly reinvent themselves and be aligned to the organizations that they serve with, which organizations do go through rapid change. And how is a PMO function? Can I continue to deliver value? Because a lot of PMOs don't always survive and last and I've seen that's a common thread through all the functions that I've been and you can't take your existence for granted.

Speaker 2 5:47

And you know, like when you're thinking about that, executive insights. I think we know for a long time that it's been hard to try to either articulate the value or convince the execs. You're either in the positive light or a negative light, depending on their past experience. How do you, is there a time where you've maybe had to articulate the value of the PMO, either to grow it, to scale it, to keep it and is there any examples or any advice you can give to someone who maybe is early in their journey that are thinking like we want to grow this and we just don't know how to get the executive support?

Speaker 1 6:19

So coming coming to an organization and establishing a green fields implementation of an epmo or pmo that has very low maturity, not only in project management capability but also data and insights.

Speaker 1 6:33

I think the sell to the exec is going to be looking for those quick wins because you know a maturity journey for an epmo or pmo could take years and often, more often than not, executive appetite is not patient.

Speaker 1 6:47

To wait around for the years because of the investment in dollars is what it takes to set up a pmo. So quick wins are really important and also selling them a vision, because you know pmo and epmo can promise getting the data aligned, having a ppm tool that provides those insights to really give, to be that strategic partner to the exec team. But that takes time and I guess on the way being really clear and managing expectations with the exec team about what's achievable in what timeframe. So small quick wins it's kind of rallying that support at the exec level is really crucial because more often than not you're not guaranteed that exec support and you know, as exec teams change and organisations change, you know I think that's the number one thing rallying around that support to the continued investment in the function, managing expectations, because the value from these investments takes time.

Translating Strategy into Actionable Programs

Speaker 2 7:41

And it's probably a good point because, especially nowadays, we're seeing like kind of inner value drivers which projects focus on, and I think the pmo landscape needs to shift to that as well. Gone are the days, I think, where we spend so much months and months and months creating all these frameworks and then find that nobody uses them. So I resonate with that, specifically when thinking about, again, talking about the executives and we talk about you know, you spend a lot of time translating strategic roadmaps into actionable programs. Like a lot of PMOs don't necessarily get to get involved in both their governance and the delivery. So when thinking about doing that, how do you? What are some of the challenges you've encountered, particularly when you're at an enterprise level, which you've been many times, and you're trying to, I guess, get everybody on board and aligned and you can't deliver everything. So, like, what's talk me through, like how you manage that, particularly when you've got so many disparate views and opinions?

Speaker 1 8:36

so I see the value of the EPMO. I think I like to call it as, like, the holy trinity. So it's linking strategy, it's linking finance and linking delivery, and that's where I see the value of the epmo is really is. So translating a strategy into those actionable programs is really critical, and I guess there are a lot of challenges in that, because, more often than not, strategy can have really lofty, vague ambitions that are, you know. What does that mean? What do we actually need to do as an organisation to deliver on this strategy? And where the value of an EPMO comes in is really providing, you know, portfolio prioritisation, investment governance to ensure that we're investing in the right things to actually turn our strategy into a reality.

Speaker 1 9:19

And it's challenging, though, because sometimes you know there can be a lack of clear prioritisation. So you know can be a lack of clear prioritization. So, you know, executives set these broad strategic goals and then teams struggle with what to focus on first. I think, also, it's really critical to have alignment between your senior leaders and the delivery teams right, because often, too often than not, I've seen investment driven bottom up where someone's got this great idea within a business unit we need to spend money on this and you aren't validate. Well, what's the strategic outcome? Oh, they're coming up with it retrospectively, so they're kind of.

Speaker 1 9:52

There needs to be that connection between how things are actually delivered and and the leadership team and the strategy, and PMOs and EPOs play that crucial role through governance, through the frameworks, through having enterprise portfolio management processes. I think is really crucial and I also think you know, in turning a strategy into an actual like a program, I think PMOs can't have too rigid a governance because too often, more often than not, I've seen organisations at the mercy of bottlenecks with rigid PMO processes and governance and frameworks. That's not fit for purpose. It actually slows down an organisation's actual ability to translate a strategy into actual execution because they're getting constrained by governance and red tape. And I think you know EPMOs, pmos these days will quickly fail if they're not responsive and adaptable to the needs of the organization and then how do you, how do you see?

Speaker 2 10:52

like? One of the things that I see typically as a consultant is I find that a lot of the time, some organizations suspend a considerable amount of time doing their annual planning and of course there's some quarterly elements as well but then when it gets to the end of that cycle and you're planning the next one, I feel like they neglect a lot of what they set out to achieve 12 months prior. So it's like how do we bridge the gap between what we said we're going to do and what we're going to do moving forward?

Speaker 1 11:20

So, first things, one of the ways that I've always approached that is having an enterprise roadmap that's multi-year, because too often than not your planning processes can be very much a finance-driven budget, annual budget process and sometimes those processes miss the bigger picture. So having a multi-year enterprise roadmap for all the things linked to strategy, so it's very clear of the link. Secondly, you made mention of you know, at the end of the year it's like, well, how are we going to look back? Did we actually achieve what we said we're going to? And I think obviously, sorry, obviously for me. Then I measure up and the benefits management processes are really crucial to ensure that. You know, at the end of the financial year we're retrospectively going to see whether the investment that we're actually in, the things that we invested in, actually get the measurable outcomes.

Speaker 1 12:13

But I've seen far too many organizations just think year on year and obviously strategic, like transformation, isn't a year-on-year proposition. These are long-term horizon things that an organization needs to do and I don't see annual planning processes as a way to kind of, oh, let's go around and find some new stuff to do. Absolutely not, I think, also to get away from that annual planning. You know, trap, I think things.

Speaker 1 12:36

You need to have one multi-year plan that evolves and shifts so we're not going through, you know, blank slates every time we go through an annual planning process. We've got one iterative plan for delivery that evolves and shifts as things change, but it's multi-year and it's really connected and aligned to what are the strategic goals of an organization.

Speaker 2 12:56

So, then, in order to do that assessment, you're obviously going to spend some time in the benefits realisation space. I'd probably have it a guess that, at least for me over the last 20 years, the benefits realisation is the part that I think most PMOs lack or have the least experience in, and delivery as well. So, in terms of benefits realisation, what are some of the key attributes or things that you'd look for?

Speaker 1 13:20

either improving an approach that exists around that, or something to set up if you were starting from scratch so one of the things I've learned around benefits management is you know you can design an amazing process and tracking process, like tracking and reporting and having amazing templates. Benefits management to me is a 90 cultural challenge and it's a change management challenge. It's not the framework. Focusing on how we're going to measure is, to me, the easy part. What I've found really beneficial on going on a benefits management journey is the visibility and transparency and also performance management. So you know, yes, it's great, we've got an assigned business case and someone's got their business owner's, got their name against this benefit targeted and often more than not, the money's been spent. The people have gone. There's no appetite to retrospectively go back and hold anyone to account.

Speaker 1 14:17

What I found really helpful is the visibility at the exec level of reporting of actually what's actually been delivered and what benefits have been realised, and then working to have performance incentives included. So there's actually a so what for not achieving benefits, because that's that's the most important loop for me. Also, you know, if you're, if you've got an initiative that's promising, cost out, if one of the benefits is cost reduction, then put your money where your mouth is and have the budget reductions because you're signing up to that. So that is the most effective way. Everything else seems to be a kind of a token. It's a token thing and you know no one cares and the money's been spent and you know the person's left. Without that integration with your performance management systems and financial management systems, it's benefit management. To me it's not.

Speaker 2 15:08

It's not very successful yeah, I, I think I tend to agree, because a lot of the times, it's usually the process that's often overlooked the most. I mean, even when we look at review frameworks that have been created internally or through third parties, it's almost, it's almost like it's just a paragraph that make sure you deliver benefits, make sure there's value. I'm curious to see if you've seen any similar examples to one. I'll describe where, in banking, for example, I found that when they started moving towards more of an agile way of working, they had to change their funding model, and one of the things that they did is they introduced like funding envelopes that were reviewed on a quarterly basis and that way you would assess if you are tracking well and if not, you'd have some of your money taken away. I don't know, have you seen anything that's like more of an iterative approach to the traditional?

Benefits Realization and Cultural Challenges

Speaker 1 15:59

Yeah, I've worked in a large corporate in the telco sector that had something like that. Worked in a large corporate in the telco sector that had something like that and, unfortunately, the quarterly release of funding and packages assigned like it was, it was more of a tick and flick activity and it was kind of like, okay, yeah, yeah, we've delivered the value, just give it us the money. Without a robust process around it, without the tough challenge conversations, it can be just another governance process that doesn't add any value because, at the end of the day, if people are just going to get their funding anyway and there's no robust discussion and stopping things once again, the culture's got to support it.

Speaker 1 16:34

If there's a culture that doesn't like stopping things, that doesn't like having challenging conversations, then it's just going to be another process that doesn't add any value.

Speaker 2 16:50

It's a good call out because, if I think back to that example I just gave, when I recall people putting up you know, they're going into their quarterly planning or their big room planning and saying, oh, you know, we've delivered x, y and z, a lot of the time they never really provided any real metrics to show that they've delivered. It was just a you know objective, a subjective opinion. So, yes, that probably makes sense. I think it's something that definitely needs work, that's for sure. I feel like, from a whole transition to Agile Ways of Working over the last, however, many years, the funding, the investment management, that front door process around prioritisation really hasn't changed too much. It's like fundamentals, the same everywhere. Yeah.

Speaker 1 17:28

Yeah, I agree. I think I've seen agile approaches to like lean portfolio management, whereas the organization or a business unit gets the bucket of money up front and they've got measures against that bucket of money. We don't want to see your business cases, we don't want you to come to investment committees Just here's your money. We'll just measure your outcomes against that bucket of money, that bucket of money. I think the best approach is somewhere between that and a typical stage-gated investment allocation approach, because more often than not once again, like you say, the measures don't like where's the objective measures? The measures don't reflect what the investment's actually set out to achieve and then you've got people spending the money on stuff they shouldn't be. That don't actually get the outcomes.

Speaker 2 18:10

And then thinking about the fact that there is I sort of go back to the cultural comment there's so many different managers that each have their own style. Some are better than others, and one of the things that I think has been really challenging a lot of the time we find I would say the most complex area has been pipeline demand prioritization. For every client we've worked with, and when I look into the reasons why one of the ones that's very prominent is at the enterprise level, you usually do have your big capital projects. You probably have some operational projects, but there's so many rats and mice projects that each function is delivery and so there's no central view of projects holistically. So how do you balance what has to be included in that versus what? You just manage it in your own and we're not going to actually pay. This is it. Is it, you know rating thing, a size like what have you seen work or not work?

Speaker 1 19:02

so I like to call the projects that the epmo or the pmos don't know about is skunk works, the stuff that happens that flies under the radar and more often than not it flies under the radar and more often than not it flies under the radar until something happens and risks occur or the technology goes down. So I think every organization struggles with identifying those change pieces of work where it goes undetected but then it has a huge impact on the business. The way that I kind of see it is like you say we don't want to apply the same set of governance for every piece of change in an organisation because you know it's just too much. And I think it takes a pragmatic approach to look at all the change activities across the organisation and see what might make sense to funnel through an APMO or PMO function. You know, I guess you think of BAU run the business and you've got activities like IT service requests and then, as you go up, to big projects. I think it's a try and see method.

Prioritization and Pipeline Management

Speaker 1 20:04

I think it needs to be calibrated based on the needs of the organisation and often I think you know a lot of organisations just decide well, capex is where delivery occurs and OpEx well, that's just you know. A lot of organizations just decide well, capex is where delivery occurs and opex, well, that's just you know, give people their money, leave them alone. But more often than not, as we've discussed, the business can run these projects and, you know, decide to. You know, buy a SaaS solution or decide to kick off a project, but the business doesn't know it's a project because the business doesn't have capability around project management. Those ones are really unfortunate and I think it's not just a. I think any approach to governing these pieces of work needs to ignore the accounting treatment. I'm not sure why organisations are so obsessed with the accounting treatment. It's actually, you know what's the change activity and what level of governance does it require. That should be the question, not whether it's CapEx or OpEx, because too much businesses are so fragmented trying to base it based on the accounting treatment. It's challenging.

Speaker 2 21:00

Yeah, it's an interesting point. There's a couple of recent examples that tie into that that I've seen recently. So I've seen one organisation who knows that there's a CapEx threshold for projects, so they've just split the project into pieces so that they can miss, miss that line and doesn't have to go to capital committee. So that's one example. And then there's other examples where they try to, I guess, portray the project in a way that, like they'll, they'll remove the element of capex by sort of saying it's just resources or whatever it might be, to try to get through an OpEx path, so like all these magic gymnastics and tricks and stuff to try to avoid, I guess, the rules that are there for a good reason.

Speaker 1 21:45

And where do you draw the line between continuous improvement that occurs out of a Bayou function versus when does it become a project? That's the million-dollar question, and I think it's not always a black-and-white answer.

Speaker 2 21:57

A hundred percent. I was working with a startup about a year ago helping them with their OKRs, and I had to laugh when they had listed buying office chairs as a project and I was like, okay. So I think to that point you're right, it is hard and it's like, okay. So I think I think to that point you're right, it is hard and it is difficult, different. But I think as an epmo, we need to be making sure that we articulate what are the guard?

Speaker 1 22:23

yeah so, if so, what happens? Is you know if all going to like to your office chair? Example, if people go through a governance pathway that's suitable for projects, for that kind of thing, the epmo will quickly get a bad reputation across the organization for over governing. When it's not the epmo that's asked, I think people get excited and go. I want my little thing to go into this sausage I call it a sausage factory, that kind of epmo governance processes and you get too many of those. And then there's a stakeholder management issue, because people perceive as a sledgehammer approach to governing, obviously, things that don't need to be going. I think it's absolutely a training exercise on what a project is and what is not, because a lot of people can be confused by that oh, 100.

Speaker 2 23:08

There's been other instances I've seen where, because there wasn't full visibility on the whole slate of projects, even the small ones, say, maybe in a midsize organization which is easier to bring them all together there's been companies I and we've worked with where they didn't even know, like the director or CEO didn't even know what some of the projects were when we brought them to their attention. And then there's other examples where you collate those projects. There there's dozens and dozens and dozens 100 plus for example and then you look at the budget you're like, oh, we've only got five million dollars. So you think 100 projects five million dollars, but like that doesn't add up. So I think the guardrails are really important and just getting a getting alignment. But, as you said, epmo shouldn't get involved in like the rats and mice. There's got some balance, otherwise you will need a team of 50 at any time.

Speaker 1 23:55

I've seen a way to carve a portfolio is, you know, in terms of your strategic initiatives, the ones that like you don't like you don't have the repeatable projects in there, the low-risk ones. In an EPMO's remit, you have those high-risk strategic transformation initiatives that make sense to have that level of governance. You know, if you think of a business, it does compliance work and it's repeatable compliance work and it's regulatory in nature. You know a lot of instances that EPMO probably wouldn't want to get involved in that space because it's just not of value. It's kind of it's stuff. It's a lot of rats in my stuff, but also stuff that's a really low risk and low complexity, that doesn't need the oversight.

Speaker 2 24:36

So then, thinking back to, you mentioned stopping projects. That's probably one that doesn't happen enough. Is there any like examples you can give where maybe either you or someone that you work with has had to sort of put a stop to a project, but maybe it was either just too late or it was just before you maybe experienced a big issue or something? Is there any examples of that that you've seen?

Business vs Technology Roadmaps

Speaker 1 25:01

Yeah. So firstly I kind of want to come back to the cultural piece so you can create a PMO, e-pmo function that has all these wonderful governance processes and information flowing out for exec decision and then the exec can get that information and not have a culture around actually having the hard conversations to stop things. So I've seen a lot of cases where there's a pet project, a GM has too much riding on their perception for it to be stopped. They're really challenging and I think for a PMmo and epmo to operate effectively in bringing that information to an exec for a decision making, there needs to be a level of psychological safety so you know to feel comfortable that they can challenge firstly and then also feel project managers that reporting on these initiatives, also feeling the emotional and psychological safety to actually call out issues. Without those foundational pieces in, you're not going to have a robust discussion and you're not. You're not going to have an exec team's going to have the courage to stop things.

Speaker 1 26:00

Yeah and unfortunately, my experience is the stopping or cessation of an of a project was always too late. It seems to be when risks have eventuated, when damage has been done reputational damage has been done to a business. I haven't seen a lot of businesses do it well.

Speaker 2 26:20

Once again, I think, supported you need the culture to support them to do it well. I think that's a really fair point, and the reason I think that is I find that a lot of the time where there is conflict is because there are some pet projects that continue to run, or maybe someone's more influential in the way they speak and they get more funding and things like that. So one of the things that I would stress to anyone listening where they're developing a prioritisation process is make it fair.

Speaker 1 26:49

so it's the same for every manager, regardless of their tenure or you know the seniority I I find, with any approach to prioritization, is the gaming that occurs with any kind of prioritization model the underestimation of the cost, the overestimation of the value, the underestimation of how long the time takes to deliver the value, and particularly earlier on in the project life cycle. That does seem to be a big of a problem. And I guess then you know what role does the epmo play in normalization of those inputs? To once again to your point, to make it there. So it isn't who screams the loudest, it isn't who's gaming the prioritisation methodology, because all those things can be challenging to face into for an EPMO, particularly when, like you say, there's pet projects that have a lot of reputation writing on them. It's challenging.

Speaker 2 27:44

And then thinking about, just in terms of trying to decipher what to focus on, when in a lot of organisations you've got your business view and you've got your technology view and supposedly business drives what tech's going to do and vice versa. When you're doing prioritisation, do you typically find that you've got to bring all of the different groups together, or are they separately prioritising and then coming together after to reprioritise Like what's the approach you find that works in a bigger company?

Speaker 1 28:19

So, firstly, in a lot of organisations and like we've discussed, I think, technology is generally a bit more mature in terms of planning and delivery and more often than not technology functions can hold the business groups to hostage. So where I've seen it done really well is the business leads the prioritization in terms of a business roadmap that's aligned to the business strategy, because it should be business first. The business should be leading what the tech function does, and then the prioritization for another technology function is about supporting the business roadmap. Prioritization for another technology function is about supporting the business roadmap. Often, obviously, technology has its own investments and kind of keep the lights on making sure the systems operate. But where I've seen it done really well is that there's a clear, you've got a business roadmap that's clearly laid out and you've got the technology roadmap underneath it. So the it's well understood about how technology supports where the business is prioritizing.

Speaker 1 29:14

But, like I said, it's still needs to be measured approach because then the systems that need to maintain and fail, fix and stuff like that. That's where I've seen it done really well. And you know, I think when technology functions prioritize investment, it should always be linked to the business outcomes they're trying to achieve as well. So you've got a suite of list of things systems, processes, capabilities that a technology function is trying to implement. It always needs to be anchored back to what business outcome and business value are those investments trying to achieve, because more often than not you might get a CEO that's excited by the next big platform or shiny new toy and it's build it and the business will come.

Speaker 2 29:56

I've seen that done in a lot of cases and you've got a ridiculously expensive system that's not adopted and not used by the business and it's wasted money 100% and it goes back to sort of what we said just at the top of the call earlier, where a lot of teams and functions bring in things and they don't have any thought at the top of the call earlier, where a lot of teams and functions bring in things and they don't have any thought for the consequence of those things, and that's a problem in itself.

Speaker 1 30:21

Often technology functions can have so much investment behind them but, like I said earlier, they hold the business hostage and I think it's remembering that technology functions are there to serve the business, because sometimes organisations can forget that they're an enabler. Technology is an enabler 100%.

Speaker 2 30:39

Yes, unfortunately not everybody is on the same page with that one, as we continuously see the sort of push and pull struggle between business and technology teams. But that's a whole other podcast episode Thinking back, so thinking about the tools and the uplifting of capability. So I just wanted to talk about a couple of things. So the role of change we've got a lot of. I feel like there's a bit more of a move towards better aligning change in PMO and in some organizations there isn't a change function, so I feel like PMOs need to wear a partial hat. What's your view on the role of change in governance delivery PMO? What are you seeing in this space?

Speaker 1 31:15

So I see the role of change as absolutely fundamental and I also see a lot of synergies between enterprise change functions and enterprise portfolio management functions, because you know not only you know within an EPMO governing and investing, and you know having frameworks around investment, but how do we deliver change? And having the visibility of change across the organization is really powerful. I haven't seen a lot of organizations do it well yet and I know I've been part or connected with a few goes at doing that. But I understand it theoretically, but the implementation is absolutely very challenging and I guess you know how valuable would it be to a business to see you know your program portfolio roadmap, but overlaid with change, right Overlaid with how it's being impacted the business, what are the change windows? And having a strategic change roadmap and understanding the impact on people I think closes the loop. I haven't personally seen it done well myself. Hopefully you have.

Speaker 2 32:17

I've seen look, I've seen it done well in some programs and then also not done so well.

Speaker 2 32:21

Thinking about some of the more recent examples, I was talking recently to someone who's sort of more of an expert in change and we were talking about the fact that when we think about change realistically, the change management function or person or whoever's wearing that hat, even if it's a pseudo role, is their responsibility, sort of to communicate outwards from a project, program or portfolio. And then you've got your PMO that should be in tandem, sitting side by side, and communicating inwards what's going on in the project and like connecting the dots that way. Yeah, I find that works really well when when it's done. But I think you know, talking about role of change, I wanted to come back to, uh, uplifting capability and also we mentioned tools. I know you've spent a bit of time working in and around the portfolio, project portfolio tools, the portfolio, ppm tools, etc. What do you think people get wrong the most when they're considering bringing in a new tool if they haven't had one in their organisation before?

Speaker 1 33:20

So the biggest challenge that I've found on this journey, both as someone delivering PPM tools and also being a business sponsor, is people expecting Ppm tools to be a panacea to fix all their organizational problems, to give them, to fix all their processes. So there's a couple of challenges and lessons learned from that, I think. Firstly, any kind of ppm implementation needs to be really aligned with maturity and I think one of the things that's really crucial from an epmo perspective is this there is some alignment in the way that projects are delivered and governed free going on the journey of a PPM tool, because if you don't have those necessary alignment in place, you're building too much complexity into the tool. It's going to cost a lot of money. So that's the first thing. Secondly, the rollout and implementation needs to be in line with the capability of the organization, and a lot of these PPM vendors are showcasing AI technologies and you click a button. It generates a business case and writes your risks. You don't have fundamental capability on knowing what good risk management looks like or knowing how to write a business case. The AI is not going to solve it for you. I think.

Speaker 1 34:31

Also a big thing for me is you know the benefit of a PPM tool is really around the aggregation of information for decision making. That's what I see the benefit of and if you've got groups that operate in silos with different data structures, different processes and different ways of working, it's very hard from an EPMO perspective to derive the value from having an integrated data set for those insights. I think that's really important. I guess another lesson learned for me is around having an mvp for day one. So you know my objective as a business sponsor is to get adoption and people to use the tool because obviously without the information flowing in, without project managers using it, rubbish in rubbish you're not going to get the outcomes. So once again, it needs to be minimal customisation, really easy to use, no bells and whistles. We want to encourage people in, get quick wins from the tool and one of the ways that I've sequenced some of the implementation of PPM tools is what are the things that we can do as an organisation that are the lowest effort but deliver the most value and then build momentum in the adoption.

Speaker 1 35:44

So one of those things that I like to prioritise is reporting. Everyone likes reporting. Everyone sees reporting goes straight up to the exec. Hey, this report generated the tool that's from our new PPM tool gets excitement, helps continue the momentum of the change. I also there's a in the ppm space. There seems to be a. It's a complex environment because you've got vendors that traditionally operate in the ppm space and you've got vendors that kind of sit outside of that, that offered modularized ppm solutions. So what is a ppm tool? What isn't? It's murky these days. You've got, you know, products that are traditional project portfolio, but you've got task management, you've got strategic portfolio management, you've got erp systems that have ppm modules. So it's I think it's really important to be clear from the very start what you're hoping to achieve from it, and because you could easily get confused and muddled up and end up with something that's not, you know, not fit for purpose or not actually set out to what it's meant to achieve 100% and there's some.

Speaker 2 36:45

I think I really agree with that murky comment because I've seen, like 10, 15 years ago there was a you know a product, for example, that was introduced to me that had some really cool AI-esque features in it.

Speaker 2 36:58

You know like I can't remember the terminology for it, but project management, sentiment analysis, that's it.

Speaker 2 37:03

And then in the recent years I've been demo after demo seeing all these different products and at the moment they seem much of the muchness. They're all very similar, they look very similar and a lot of them tend to have everything and anything, which becomes messy, because not every organization needs everything and anything. So if you bring in a mature product into a less mature environment, you're going to spend more time trying to figure out how to use it and not set up right matching to an existing process is going to cause a huge amount of rework later, and then what will happen? Another example is recent uh, recent years a client who has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars per annum in license fees and support and they don't use any of it, and I think that overall there's probably like three people using a software where they're paying for like 100 plus licenses. So it's just messy and I think we've got to take a step back and treat bringing in a PPM like you would any other project, not just buying one off the shelf because you can plug and play.

Speaker 1 38:06

So the murkiness of the PPM landscape is I see it in the plant in the Gartner PPM quadrant where there used to be the key players in that quadrant. We all knew who they were.

Speaker 2 38:16

Yes.

Speaker 2 38:16

And nowadays it's just yeah, yeah, it's really complicated a hundred percent and and you know I find the ones that appear to be the most popular can sometimes be the most complex, and bringing that in it's yeah, it doesn't doesn't work well.

Speaker 2 38:31

I was at one organization not long ago and they had four competing ppm tools in different functions.

Speaker 2 38:38

You know everything from your more well-known ones to sort of some in the midline to some that are you know more light on and each one of those four areas because you wanted to get data in there started to engage at different points of the year with their finance teams to try to bring finance data in there so they can do reporting that's actually useful.

Speaker 2 39:04

So finance is the one that raised this flag going and so they had to shut that project, shut those projects down and then reassess and actually take a step back and evaluate and analyze what the right approach is for that. So, yeah, it's definitely a messy, very messy process, but anyways, we're almost the end of our time, right? I know we probably could keep talking about all the wonderful things you're also doing in the community and practice space for PMOs, which I'm sure we can find out more from you about that, but one of the things I want to end with is if there's anything else that you think that you'd like to share with our listeners, a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder today our listeners a call to action, a piece of advice or a question to ponder today.

Speaker 1 39:46

So for me, I guess the biggest learning of being a PMO and a PMO function, as I said earlier, is you can never take your existence for granted. Organisations change and evolve and I think, as a PMO leader, you need to constantly reassess and reestablish what your servicing offering is to a business, because you can't take it for granted. One of the things that I've seen play out is PMOs can be rigid, they can come in, they can be framework evangelists and they can forget the reason why what problems they're set out to solve and what value they're trying to bring to a business. Solve and what value they're trying to bring to a business. And I think where pmos and epmos particularly epmos is the work, survive and, you know, prosper is that continued exec alignment and buy-in. And and that to me is fundamental, more so than the frameworks that, like the frameworks.

Speaker 1 40:35

To me there's too much focus on frameworks and tools and templates. What's the outcome we're actually getting and is what we're trying to implement fit for purpose for an organisation? And, you know, is it minimum viable governance? That's my favourite term. It's like, are we introducing the right level of governance for the risks and the risk appetite of the organisation. That's the things that are most important. What framework it is, it's irrelevant. To me, it's not important.

Speaker 2 41:03

I like that minimum value, the MVG.

Speaker 1 41:05

I like that.

Speaker 2 41:06

I have to use that. I think, yeah, it's a really good call out and I think to your point, you don't want to assume that what you did in the previous organisation is the right thing for that, just because you did it really well, because every company is different. So I think I think everyone can agree to that.

Speaker 1 41:23

I always hope they can agree to that and the focus on the why, because you know, as a non-project practitioner, a lot of people the what is the framework? But why? Why do we have a framework?

Speaker 2 41:33

and the why is often not clear enough in a lot of these yeah, I agree, and project management doesn't mean much to some people that are not in project management. We got to remember that. So that's why the why is so important. I love it. So, ryan, where can people find you and stay connected with you? What's the best place for them to reach out?

Speaker 1 41:51

Yeah, so reach out on LinkedIn and I'm always open for chats, coffee and networking. I'm always looking to kind of build new relationships and hear what others are doing in this space.

Speaker 2 42:01

Amazing. Well, thank you, Ryan, for your time and your wisdom. We very much appreciate it and look forward to seeing more of you with all the community practice work that you've been doing as well.

Speaker 1 42:10

Lovely to be here, thank you.

Speaker 2 42:12

Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. Please share this with someone or rate it if you enjoyed it. Don't forget to follow us on social media and to stay up to date with all things Agile Ideas, go to our website, wwwagilemanagementofficecom. I hope you've been able to learn, feel or be inspired today. Until next time, what's your Agile Idea?