Programme Management



Organisations have moved steadily away from traditional line management functions into project working. This now dominates the working environment, with new ‘initiatives’ appearing in Inboxes every week. Initiative overload leads to projects having to compete for time and resources, so many stay as initiatives rather than ‘finitiatives’!

We know it can be difficult to generate that extra special effort required to deliver tangible and timely results of high quality, especially when project work is expected to be done alongside normal core work, leading to constant demands for more resources. Prioritising projects to allocate the right resources is a complex challenge and needs projects to be scoped evaluated and managed differently.

We see projects as investments for the organisation and we work with our clients to maximise the contribution of projects to the overall success of the business by taking a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) approach. This aligns the Portfolio of all the organisation’s programmes and projects to strategy and goals, so effective utilisation of the business’ people and other resources become natural priorities. The model below shows how this maximises impact on the bottom line.


Key issues we recognise in basing our approach on this model are:

  • determining the ‘right’ pecking order of projects
  • the ‘turning off’ of projects that conflict with strategic objectives and which dilute resources
  • equipping team and leadership groups with the awareness, skills and confidence to make the necessary robust and fact-based decisions about their portfolio of projects.

What we have typically found is that organisations have too many projects relative to their capacity and their approaches to the problem are:

  • Piecemeal solutions
  • Failure to appreciate and manage at the Portfolio (ie: strategic) level
  • Absence of a corporate change culture

We therefore examine and enable the on-going management of change in the Portfolio. Finally we look at the practices required to manage the Portfolio through monitoring and the continuous improvement of business practices, with special emphasis on providing quality data for making Portfolio decisions.

We have found that companies need to understand that projects, programmes and portfolio have to be synchronised with their organisation’s capability development as shown in the figure below and this has to be supported across process, people and tools/techniques. In short maturity of PPM cannot proceed without maturity in Project Management skills and PMO capability.


In developing capability, each company has its own unique needs, so we:

  • Assess, map and recommend PPM processes tailored to your situation
  • Work with PPM teams to guide them through set-up and beyond
  • Provide process training and coaching throughout
  • Drive the system by business processes, not systems tools
  • Fully integrate the process with our Change Management methodology to create a culture open to innovation

By elevating Programmes out of corrosive internal competition for resources into the strategic arena, PPM becomes a predictive planning tool for delivering an organisation’s objectives.


Case Studies


What Our Clients say