Mohammed Thiab

If I got this wrong, I will attribute to the fact that English is not my mother tongue! Anyway, the way I understand the word “portfolio” is a “collection of things with commonalities in between to justify grouping them together” and dealing with them as one single entity. I base this understanding in line with the dictionary definition of portfolio as: - port·fo·li·o (pôrt-fl-, prt-)n. pl. port·fo·li·os

a. A portable case for holding material, such as loose papers, photographs, or drawings.

b. The materials collected in such a case, especially when representative of a person’s work Now as it stands -on its own- , the word portfolio does not give any specific meaning on its own. It has to be qualified - by something - to be meaningful. So if you say the word “portfolio”, I would ask “portfolio of what?” or “what portfolio?” Obviously, you can have different portfolios like a portfolio of your own photographs, artwork, stamps collection, financial assets, banking services, projects … etc… etc… etc. Now, if we talk about project portfolio management (PPM), then we mean literally “project portfolio” management and this means “managing a portfolio (collection) of projects with some commonality between them that justifies grouping them as a collection (or portfolio) of projects”. I have heard other arguments suggesting that PPM stands for “project, portfolio management”. See the comma there? I really don’t know where it came from. But I see the intention to separate project from portfolio, and then I would go back and as “portfolio of what?”

• If the answer comes “projects”, then I would say “why the heck did you put that comma for then?”
• If the answer comes blank, then I would go back to the language aspect, and as what kind of portfolio are you talking about?

Portfolio on its own is not enough indication of what we are talking about.

If you are in a bank and talk of banking products portfolio, I would appreciate that. If you are a service company and you talk of your services portfolio. I would also understand that and appreciate whether your services portfolio includes catering, cleaning, dish-washing, laundry, or what so ever. Equally, if your business is project management, and you talk of portfolio management, I would understand that as “project portfolio” management.

I hope this makes sense to you as it does to me!!!

I would like to re-address the naming and concept behind programme and project management and wouldlook forward for your feeback/views.

Let us look at “programmes” as consisting of “components” that represent “projects” and “non-project related work” that fills the gaps and binds the projects within the overall programme.

As there could be several projects within a programme, there is nothing to stop us from managing these projects as “single/independent projects” and/or as “project portfolios” (collections) due to their commonalities and interdependencies.

If this is OK with you, then would not this lead us to the conclusion that programme management is indeed a superset of project portfolio management ?

and …

if this is also OK with you, wouldn’t this lead us to another more serious conclusion that the subject of project portfolio management (PPM) is obsoleted by programme management ?

and .. if not so …

then wouldn’t we at least feel OK to say that PPM should be a subset (and hence incorporated) in programme management ?

I would be interested in hearing your views on this !!

Within the context of the P3 (projects, portfolios and programmes) management, there is an obvious overlap of terminology that is causing a confusion to the rest of us who deny this problem from start. I have been debating this issue over multiple forums/discussion groups and so far have not reached any uniform global consensus on what is what in this regard.

While everyone seems to agree on what a project is, the issue seems to be in the extrapolation of the concept to higher level. To cut this topic short, here is my view that I promoted and lobbied for in those discussions.

Next after projects, we may have …

• Project Portfolios; which are basically “collections of projects” that need to be run concurrently (overlapping) and having commonalities/interdependencies among them that it makes more sense to manage them collectively for best results. These project portfolios can be part of programmes or on their own without any relation to programmes.
• Programmes; which may include several discrete/isolated projects each one executed separately and independently from the other projects and with no contention/overlap and/or interdependencies between these projects. In addition, it would be possible to have other non-project related work that would compliment the projects within the programme. It would also be possible to have project portfolios also within the programme.

Interestingly, we may even find different combinations, deviations & flavors with slight variation in terminology although the underlying concept is basically the same.  A typical case would be the one of mega-size projects which are usually large, complex and carry strategic significance to the corporate, we may consider the whole thing as one single project, or possibly break it down into smaller-size projects within a project portfolio if you wish.

The point here is that programmes are more of a long-term ongoing/continuous nature when compared to projects and project portfolios.  While there is still this ‘temporary’ flavor in programmes, it is not that pressing or eminent.  Programmes are also closely connected to the overall business strategy and its fulfillment,  this could imply a strong connection between programme(s) and strategic planning committees, advisory boards and steering committees.

We also have seen programmes that link to national-level interests and even regional/global ones.  You may have a look at the different programmes under the United Nations umbrella and leading nations on this globe.

This is just the beginning of what I expect to get into an interesting and elaborate discussion.

Get back to me either on my forum (www.mohammedthiab.com) or wherever you see this posting as a result of RSS feeding of this posting.

As oil prices keep rising (they reached 135 $ a barrel yesterday), the question poses itself.  Is it the oil that is becoming very expensive ? or is it the dollar that is getting very weak ?

It was noted that while oil-rich countries revenues increased, cost of living did not go down at all.  In GCC countries specially, cost of living increased 30$ to 50% in the last 2 years or so.  This is mainly attributed to imports done in other currencies (Euro mainly)  which got higher exchange rates to the US dollar which remained the main export from these countries.

What good is the rising oil price to anyone ? and why does it keep going up ?  Is anyone benefiting from this movement ?

One of the theories says that increasing oil prices is (was) expected to limit the economical strength of emerging forces like China and India, and if this is true, then this theory has failed and any increase in oil prices is reflected back on the exports of these countries.  It is obvious that US control over oil producing regions like middle-east (following invasion of Iraq) and central Asia (following invasion of Afghanistan) has not given the US any additional control on Europe, China and India !!

Now, let us think a bit into the future and this could be very near future.

What will happen when/if oil prices increase to 150 $ a barrel ?  200 $ a barrel ? higher ?

For one, the poor countries will get poorer, some will go back to primitive life styles, others will destroy their food to produce biofuels, hunger and poverty will grow, and we will see starvation reaching new parts of the world, specially if more natural disaster hit the world affecting the already shrinking agricultural production and food supplies !!

What is the wisdom of all of this  ???????????????
Who is driving this craziness ? who is benefiting from it ? and what is driving it ?

Oil production/export levels did not go down, in fact it went up recently. World demand on crude oil has not increased significantly, maybe 5% - 10%  or a little more, but this does not justify the oil price going 5 times up in the last 3-5 years.  does it ?

Why would crude oil price go up if gasoline stocks go down in the US ? or when/if a hurricane approaches Florida/Texas coast ?  Why does it go up if a political conflict pops up in middle-east, Africa or South America  while oil supplies go untouched by these developments ?

Isn’ this a a mix of politics, monopoly and greed ?

What do you think ?

Project Management (PM) is evolving and the whole PM practice/discipline is maturing over time. However, the complexity level and associated challenges are increasing. Project managers/directors (vendor side) and project sponsors / owners (client side) are struggling to keep pace with mounting pressures to cope with increasing demand for successful projects and programmes.

Assessing the efficiency/effectiveness of PM practice has been subject to a continuous evolution and is expected to continue doing so over the next few years. We have witnessed the adoption and adaptation of maturity models (like CMMI) to project management to produce a project management maturity model (PMMM) and operational project management maturity model (OPM3) and the new- draft version - project, portfolio and programme management maturity model (P3M3) effort.

Stemming from the well-known principle “You cannot manage what you cannot measure“, it becomes necessary to consider a universal set of key performance indicators (PKI’s) that will help us assess the health-check of the PM practice itself and the projects being executed and delivered.

The value proposition of this topic is multifold: -

• At the client level; this would -naturally- be of interest to all major clients relying on projects to turn their visions into reality, deliver new systems/services, serve their customers, grow and prosper.
• At the vendor level; this would also be of interest to IT service providers, and implementation/integration companies.
• At the personal/professional level, this topic should also be of interest to project owners/sponsors, project managers, project directors, project management office (PMO) heads, programme managers and so on so forth.

The value proposition covers multiple existing levels within the project management practice.

• Single Project management (PM) / Project Coordination Office (PCO)
• Project Management Office (PMO) overseeing several single projects and/or project portfolios
• Program Support Office (PSO) overseeing programmes/projects that map to key/strategic initiatives
• Corporate Strategy Planning Office (CSPO) which would be responsible for the organization’s business master-plan, and deals directly with the organization’s basic business model descriptors (BMD’s)/overall corporate performance measurement and assessment.

Regardless what setup you have and what your role could be, the question that pops up within the context of this discussion will be: -
“What would be the most significant key performance indicators (KPI’s) that would help you most to determine the overall efficiency/effectiveness of the project management practice in your organization ?

Initially, let us focus on “what” KPI’s we can possibly include and postpone the “how-to” aspect of obtaining the values of these KPI’s.  Let us also determine the categories of these KPI’s above and beyond the single project performance indicators that most project managers try to track.

1. Timely Progress Indicator; how well we are actually doing -timewise- at any point during the project lifetime versus expected/desired values.
2. Cost Control Indicator; showing actual spending per per activity, phase, deliverable versus the planned cost/budget for such items.
3. Quality Assurance Indicator; giving the overall quality indicator of the work being done, interim deliverables, errors and complaints, resolved/unresolved quality issues status, and other sub-indicators.
4. Risk Assessment Indicator; giving an overall cumulative status of the project risk in its entirety and at the phase/activity level. The sub-indicators and contributors to the total risk assessment indicator need to be worked out in detail.

As we continue to elaborate on and evolve the PM-KPI’s concept and details. I would envision incorporating the outcome (proposed KPI’s) at different possible levels within the PM organizational hierarchy.

My thoughts at this stage include two items: -

• Incorporate these KPI’s in maturity assessment practices including PMMM, OPM3 and P3M3 to enrich these tools in determining the health-check of the PM practice itseld and continually improve it.

• Incorporate these PKI’s in what I call “PM executive dashboards” which should give selected subsets of these KPI’s to be represented at different levels/positions within the PM organizational hierarchy according to the interests and actual needs of these positions/levels.

I hope you share with me this enthusiasm to this subject and see with me its practical value and implications in addressing the growing PM practice complexity and challenges.

Maximizing profits is probably the most appealing topic to business managers and executives. In fact it should be a common interest to everyone in light of survival, growth and prosperity concerns, challenges and ambitions that each and everyone should have. Based on the simple definition that: - (Profit = revenues - costs) we found that decision makers in almost all organizations - public and private sectors - used to take the easy way to maximizing profitability through cutting cost. Unfortunately, this is admittedly an unconscious way to express surrender to the assumption that there is NO way to control, guarantee or feel confident that revenues can be increased. It leads to shrinking business results rather than growth and on the long run would lead to totally undesired results. Fortunately, over the past few years, decision support systems (DSS) became more mature and more sophisticated to cope with increasing challenges. Business Intelligence (BI) applications came as the present and future generation of the DSS applications of the past and took a big leap into advanced analytics much beyond historical analysis after the fact. BI moved into such topics as predictive analysis, pattern analysis, behavioral analysis, what-if scenarios, complex ad-hoc queries and so on so forth. BI applications include strategic planning, budgeting and scheduling, activity-based costing, asset/liability management, risk management, marketing campaigns, sales/revenue forecasting and profitability. It is such a fascinating topic that got my attention in some practical situations that even connected to other disciplines as customer relationship management (CRM) and supply chain management (SCM). Keep looking at the overall picture (jungle view) even when you zoom into specific areas. Never lose sight of the holistic view. So, we cannot take the profitability topic in isolation from related things as budgeting, costing, activity based costing, asset liability management, … etc and this enforces some level of integration between these applications and their relative databases which are often consolidated into one common data warehouse or data mart that these BI applications can use. Back to the profitability topic. I would like to apply the model to something very popular like a big supermarket or even better a supermarket chain with many branches in many locations. Here, you nay find literally tens (or even hundreds) of thousands of items coming from several hundred suppliers locally and abroad. hundreds/thousands of shoppers visit such a supermarket every day, and spend tens of thousands of dollars if not more. You should know the picture and how it looks like unless you still live in a cave or a small village somewhere. I have been into profitability projects for a very popular supermarket chain and got some quite interesting observations, findings and conclusions. The owners/managers were even more excited at these outcomes from the project as it gave very clear indications of what they could possibly do to maximize business results. Interestingly as you may expect, these findings/recommendations were either generic and applicable to all branches (regardless of location, size and the locality itself ) or branch specific per those considerations I just listed. Another interesting aspect of this project is that it overlapped as I alluded to earlier to such areas as supply chain, purchasing, storage/warehouse, distribution and logistics, as it did allude to customer relations, competition, marketing campaigns, sales forecasts and profitability in general. The recommendations exceeded pure IT applications, systems and services to get into communications and control as well throughout the complete process chain in the overall business model. We touched on automation, integration and optimization possibilities all the way to executive dashboards as the ultimate decision support tool for decision makers and executives. Back to profitability once again, I did enjoy the exercise specially when you zoom from the overall high-level picture into specific pain and gain issue, like helicopter maneuvering from the 1 mile altitude to the few feet view, almost touching the tips of the trees and having the chance to examine the details and pinpoint on these issues. I particularly enjoyed the many different ways you could ’slice and dice’ these issues and address specific areas as: -

• Overall Profitability/growth for the supermarket chain versus time
• Profitability per branch versus time
• Profitability per square meter of the supermarket(s) space
• Profitability per product
• Profitability per product portfolios (batches)
• Profitability per supplier
• Profitability per lot, shelf and rack
• Profitability per function/position/role
• Profitability per employee (individuals level)

As it comes to the last item in the list, things get sensitive I must say; everyone in the organization from the general manager to the janitor is under scrutiny. Activity based costing (ABC) becomes critical here to allocate actual (incurred) costs to the different cost centers touching on the numbers in the profitability matrix above. While this looks great at first view, it becomes an exposure for certain people/functions leading to negative reactions, denial and protective/defensive politics if things are loose ! Anyway, this is another topic for future postings …

Enjoy the rest of your day !

SI-PM framework

System Integration Project Management (SI-PM) framework is a result of proven practical experiences over the past 20 years especially in the case of mega-size integration projects involving several players from different organizations. SI-PM framework enables efficient/effective team building and results-oriented performance of such mega-size integration projects.

System integration (SI) projects are usually large/complex projects that involve multiple vendors/suppliers delivering different (yet complimentary) pieces of the overall desired solution. The prime vendor (contractor) owning the biggest/most significant piece of the solution may be the system integrator, or may – in some cases – bring a system integrator as one of the players in the overall project implementation.

At the core of this framework, we still have the standard/conventional project management practice where activities are scheduled, resources are allocated, and overall project progress is monitored and reported. But, in addition to that, SI-PM framework incorporates considerable modularity, flexibility and scalability to cope with the most demanding situations.

To demonstrate these attributes, let me go over the key additional elements in the SI-PM framework: -

• Client Coordination; maybe viewed as a special manipulation of the famous customer relationship management (CRM) model adapted to the nature and lifetime of the project. Under this component, a single point of client coordination/contact (SPOC) is appointed ton handle all client relations including overall coordination activities, regular weekly/monthly meetings, status reports, progress reports … etc. A SPOC officer is appointed as the official contact point between the whole project management team and the customer. Admin/Office support and logistics may be dedicated to SPOC officer to offload such activities and dedicate more time to the customer.
• Vendor/Supplier Coordination; maybe viewed as a special adaptation of the famous supply chain management (SCM) to fit the project nature and its specifics. This function is crucial in mega-size/multi-vendor system integration (SI) projects due to potential supply chain complexity and inherent external dependencies/inter-dependencies between the different vendors/suppliers participating in the project. A vendor/supplier (liaison) officer is appointed as the official contract point between the project team in its entirety and the myriad of vendors/suppliers participating in the project. Admin/Office support and logistics may also be dedicated to help focus more on vendor/supplier relationships.
• Solution Architect; providing the link between what had been proposed as a solution and what is being implemented to deliver this solution. The solution architect also bridges any business/technology gaps and ensures that selected technologies, products and services map very well to the business needs/expectations of the project and its desired outcome. The solution architecture can be primarily IT specific. However, it is very likely to incorporate other technologies and possibly non-technical elements as well.
• Quality Assurance; manages the overall quality of the project and ensures all deliverables are within contractual obligations. Quality assurance officer works primarily with internal/external auditors from the client side, maintains constant watch on the deliverables and their timeliness/compliance with the project master plan.

It is to be noted that the above functional description is of generic nature and does not mandate any specific organizational aspects of the project management team. However, the following remarks/suggestion could be worth considering: -

1. Function-to-Person mapping; needs to be done either “one-to-one” or “one-to-many” depending on project size, complexity and significance. System integration projects usually rank high in these attributed, hence it would be normal to have enough resources to implement a full functional project support office where we would adopt the “one-to-many” option..
2. Admin/logistics resources could be allocated/dedicated at the functional level within the project management team, or could be all in one shared resource pool.
3. Clearly defined, documented & communicated roles/responsibilities of the different functions within the project management team are necessary to enhance inner workflow and smooth operations between these functions.
4. Mapping individual job descriptions/objectives to the function(s) where these individuals belong is necessary to boost the morale and improve the individuals’ performance within their functions and within the overall project management team in general.
5. Ownership/accountability; another important aspect that needs to be sorted out letting everyone know who is supposed to do what (and when), and everyone will be held accountable for what he is supposed to be doing within the overall master plan of the project.
6. Enablement/Empowerment; to give essence to the ownership/accountability discipline, project management functions and people within these functions need to be empowered/enabled to perform their duties as expected from them.
7. Negotiation/Delegation; key players need to practice excellent negotiation skills with other persons/entities they deal with to ensure maximum efficiency/effectiveness in project execution. They also need to know when to delegate authorities/responsibilities, what they can delegate, to who and under what circumstances.
8. Communication skills; needless to say are required from all project management team members in the requested/desired forms and means throughout the project. Formal communications, informal communications, written and verbal, regular and ad-hoc are needed for overall proper functioning and performance.
9. Incentives/Awards; in addition to the ‘people get paid to do what they are supposed to do’ kind of logic, large/complex projects need to consider additional incentives/awards for outstanding individual and team performance.

Project Management workflow semantics between the different functions is another important aspect that needs to be worked in detail under custody of the overall project/programme director. The interfaces, formats, communication etiquette, content and frequency of the internal communications need to be settled and agreed upon among all involved parties within the expectations and mandates of the project.

Advanced project management topics may also be considered including project portfolio management (PPM), project management maturity model (PMMM) assessment and project management performance executive dashboards, where project progress and key performance indicators may be extracted, updated and presented in real-time visual color/graphics format.

While these advanced topics can be taken individually on their own, I would strongly recommend taking them within the context of the SI-PM framework and its functions/components pick the performance indicators accordingly and use them in the PM executive dashboard for quick status overview and pinpointing trouble areas for special handling.

Technology, automation, optimization of enterprises around us is one form of making life better, easier and more enjoyable.  But technology alone is not enough to fix the problems and challenges we face in our daily lives.  We have to adopt some standard principles and concepts universally and globally to boost the idea of clarity and transparency in all our daily practices within and across the entities that we belong to.   As you may expect, this would cover business, politics, social and humanitarian activities worldwide.

But, what is the ultimate objective ?

• Individuals try to increase their personal income and improve their lives
• Businesses  try to increase their revenues/profits to boost growth and market share.
• Governments try to address the needs and ambitions for their own people.

and so on so forth ….  but have we reached the bottom of this exercise ?

Are we saying money is the ultimate objective ? enough money ? more money ? and whatever money can buy ?  I am sure the majority will agree with this conclusion, but is this true ?

May I suggest that money is means to an objective and not an objective on its own.  Furthermore, I may agree that it is not money itself, but what money buys that counts in this matter.   May I also suggest that happiness would be our ultimate objective, as individuals, families and friends, groups and communities , countries and nations and across the borders to cover the whole globe.

Assuming we agree on the above (I hope), let me pose a big question here.

Can money buy happiness ?

If we look at money and what money can buy as one circle, and happiness as another circle.  Different opinions may view these two circles as overlapping more or less. Others  may view the two things as synonyms, and others may view the two circles completely separate.  Some people may be practical and pragmatic, others may be romantic, perfectionists, idealists, … etc.

I have my own belief here,  but rather than trying to impose it on you, let me hear your views and share with us how you think about the whole issue.

With increasing talk about software on demand, service on demand, storage on demand, software as a service (SaaS) and other forms of web-hosted applications and services, the question about suitability for high-end large corporations pops up.

While there may be some consensus on the value proposition of this wave to small/medium customers, there is considerable doubt about the acceptance level of such services in the high-end large corporations side.

I would like to take specific advanced IT topics where large corporation spend millions of dollars, several years, and put the reputation and future on the line before seeing something which may ultimately not be what they expected and signed for.

Let me take the case of enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), supply-chain management (SCM), business intelligence (BI) as examples. How many large corporations would see the value in relying on the remote service model versus taking their shot and trying to implement them in house ?

Let us focus our comments and discussion on the PROS and CONS of this approach for large (enterprise) organizations and use examples and references wherever possible.

This is exactly what I have done in MV-Consulting focus areas/offerings. In line with the mission/vision statements I chose for MV-Consulting and the objectives/goals I defined for its operation.

In short, I decided to pursue premium value topics above and beyond the hypothetical commodity line that determines where it pays little, more or most for the same amount of effort and investment you put.

Having spent most of my career in IT and IT related topics, I find it best to my professional image to stick to this field and still focus on premium value items and avoid commodities.

With this view in consideration, I looked at mega-size projects and key/strategic initiatives where billions of dollars are spent every year, and determined the following focus categories for my business model

• Planning/Modeling/Design Category:: which includes such topics as business planning, business modeling, strategic planning, balanced scorecards, SWOT analysis, business process management, enterprise architecting, high-level physical/logical designs, formal requirements gathering, turning true business needs into workable technology solutions, professional RFP preparation, vendor/solution/proposal assessment and selection, …
• Implementing/Installing/Customizing Category: which includes such topics as project management, project portfolio management (PPM), programme management, project management office (PMO), programme support office (PSO), project management maturity model (PMMM), Operational project management maturity model (OPM3), project, portfolio, and programme management maturity model (P3M3), Quality Assurance (QA), ….
• Operation/Production/Management Category; which includes such topics as operations management, operations support, technical support, helpdesk/service centers, problem management, change/release management, configuration management, capacity management, performance management, business management, security management, business continuity/disaster recovery planning, ….
• Global Governance Category: which includes such topics as corporate governance, IT governance, overall compliance with international/industry standards and regulatory mandates, pre-audit/post-audit services, health-check assessments, independent validation, verification and certification services …

For each and every one of these focus areas, offerings are prepared to cover training, awareness and skills development (1), consultancy & professional services (2), and special niche solutions (3) to help customers throughout the complete lifecycle associated with these current and future needs in public and private sectors alike.

Going in depth with these offerings, international standards, best practices, and MV-Consulting own methodologies, techniques and tools are incorporated including MV-BTC master methodology framework, MV-AIO ultimate objective of the exercise, MV-TCS umbrella for the offering, MV-E2E to define the width of the scope of work and MV-Top5 to define the desired depth of the scope of work and level of engagement.

With this model, it is possible now to achieve a handsome 6-digit income annually and shoot for an expanded best-of-breed consultancy/services company that can differentiate itself worldwide !