Successful PPM Tool Implementation: Best Practice Principles & Real-World Case Study / PMO Conference 2023

If your organisation is looking to deploy a Project Portfolio Management tool, or if you’ve got one deployed that isn’t quite delivering on its promise, then this session is for you!

With a background of 20 years in the PPM space, Gero Renker shares the essence of Program Framework’s experience in implementing PPM solutions for hundreds of organisations as concepts that you can apply yourself to achieve success.

This session will be co-presented by Matt Franklin of LifeArc, a leading UK medical research charity. He discusses his real-world experience in applying these principles to transform multiple complex portfolios.

Covering the full journey from business case and tool selection to implementation and ongoing adoption, get some real-world pragmatic advice on what you can do right from the start, and what traps to avoid.

Recorded Session

Presentation Deck

PMO Reporter / Tayo Richards

Tayo, one of the PMO reporters at the conference, shares her thoughts on the session:

Tayo Richards is an experienced project/programme management office manager, a business transformation specialist and change leader, [you can connect with her here] The PMO Reporter role is a volunteer activity for House of PMO members.

PMO Reporter / Martin Bell

Implementation of PPM Tools are a common source of headaches for PMOs and the organisations that they operate within. During this session, Gero Renker, Co-Founder at Program Framework, and Matt Franklin, Head of PMO Operations at LifeArc, gave their thoughts on how to make PPM Tool Implementations successful the first time, every time.
Straight away Gero found his audience after outlining that you need a PPM tool if you live in ‘Spreadsheet Hell’. This felt a little close to home with a few people in the audience, including me!

Gero’s list of Do’s and Don’ts was a simple way of putting across some basic rules and acted as a challenge to some of the more common approaches:

• You’re Too Small To Need a PPM, this one really hit home for me. In a lot of PMOs you have to get used to changing the tyre while the car is still moving. Wouldn’t you much rather be doing that on a Mini Cooper than an 18 wheeler? If you implement a tool when you are small the challenge changes to a matter of scalability but you at least have a foundation to build on.
• Focus on goals, aspirations and challenges not on designing the solution. If you have decided to take the plunge and get a PPM tool then make your requirements do the work. Convey where you want to be with vendors and what is stopping you from getting there. If you want to design the solution then consider the citizen developer route, but if you have acknowledged that you need a PPM tool then work alongside vendors to get a long term solution
• Win over your customers. In change management your customers will determine how successful you are. You could have the best solution on the market but if they haven’t been taken on the journey and don’t feel part of it, you will fail. Take a leaf out of your marketing colleagues playbook, identify each of your personas and sell the benefits to each of them.
• Launch a Minimum Viable Product to a small group. The reputation of you PMO and your new shiny PPM tool will hinge on reputation. Do you want to let a thousand user loose on dozens of features on day one, or would you rather launch steadily through smaller trusted user groups? This one should be a no brainer, but I’ve seen first hand that it doesn’t always happen.

When I first started my current role these fundamental concepts would have saved me hours, days, and weeks of my time. If you are facing challenges, growth pains, or lack of transparency, may it be time to change that tyre?

Martin is an experienced PMO, programme and change professional and [you can connect with him here] The PMO Reporter role is a volunteer activity for House of PMO members.

About Gero and Matt

Gero Renker is a co-founder of Program Framework – [you can connect with him here] specialising in helping  PMOs transform with the help of Microsoft Cloud solutions for Project and Portfolio management.

Matt Franklin is Head of PMO (Operations) at LifeArc [you can connect with him here]. He has been leading the transformation of Life Sciences, IT and Business portfolios and will be sharing lessons he has learned along the way.