Midsize Enterprise Summit: Every Company Needs A PPM Champion

"Many factors contribute to PPM executive difficulties. Good processes based on standards can fail. Well-intentioned people can have bad results," said Mark Perry, author and director of PMO services at gantthead, during a breakout session at the Midsize Enterprise Summit.

To achieve PPM success, each member of the executive team should give input to help set objectives and expectations, Perry said.

"People need to be educated before you even have a discussion about aligning the business. What does PPM include? There are a lot of PPM tools in the market, but you need the right strategy to [make them work]," he said.

An executive must champion the PPM initiative, one who is not the PMO manager or the person the PMO manager reports to, Perry said. It can be the COO, CFO, chief strategy officer, senior vice president of manufacturing or senior vice president of marketing, he said.

"Try to take the person who is the biggest naysayer to become your champion. If you can make them the champion, you'll have the most ardent support," said Perry.

In many cases incremental adoption is more conducive to success than a big-bang strategy, he said.

Perry told the story of a company that needed someone to oversee a PPM solution. The vice president of sales wanted more resources to perform billable services projects and the vice president of professional services sought better processes around requirements, pricing and delivery.

The company had two final candidates: One certified and one with management experience in sales, marketing, business development and professional services, but no certification.

The certified candidate was hired but quit a year later when executive leadership was unhappy with the results. The second candidate asked executives to list their key problems and objectives and held a workshop to bang out a strategy that worked for all parties. "He had a more consultative approach that arrived at needs jointly, shared information and had a common view of what PMO was all about," Perry said.