Business Analytics Portfolio Management & Project Management

Business Analytics solutions are often not built in one go. In most, if not all, cases, Business Analytics is a journey or a program. Given the time it usually takes for the business to adopt the new solutions and for the PMCC or ICT to deliver the new solutions, the Business Analytics Program is usually delivered in several iterations or projects.

Sometimes these projects will run sequentially, but very often these may run in parallel as well. Or there may be competition for the scarce resources (machines, software licences, development budget, etc). In those cases, it is important to have a strong Portfolio and Project management methodology in place. The portfolio management will assist you in selecting those projects that will benefit your organization most. Having this in place is usually a good answer to the situation where the guy who yells the hardest or the first, will see his project realized. Portfolio Management will allow you to evaluate the different Business Analytics
projects that have been defined and to prioritize them, as much as possible in a quantative or objective way. It will keep into account the added value to the organization's objectives and balance that with the expected costs. Ideally, this will result in the selection of the optimal project(s).
 
Next to selecting the right projects to execute, it is also important to have a tight Project Management approach. element61 can help you in defining a Project Management standard that is specifically tailored towards Performance Management projects. It is true that a lot of the best practices in project management are generic, but it does help to have a Project Management methodology that incorporates some of the specific tasks, best practices and deliverables that are tailored to Business Intelligence or Performance Management. At element61, we always use our internally developed methodology "elementary" (see elsewhere on this site) which is a combination of Project Management and Performance Management best practices.
 
Contact us for more information or with your specific request.