Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

Outsource the right functions to secure your business.

Analyst Perspective

Understanding your security needs and remaining accountable is the key to selecting the right partner.

The need for specialized security services is fast becoming a necessity to most organizations. However, resource challenges will always mean that organizations will still have to take practical measures to ensure that the time, quality, and service that they require from outsourcing partners have been carefully crafted and packaged to elicit the right services that cover all their needs and requirements.

Organizations must ensure that security partners are aligned not only with their needs and requirements, but also with the corporate culture. Rather than introducing hindrances to daily operations, security partners must support business goals and protect the organization’s interests at all times.

And as always, outsource only your responsibilities and do not outsource your accountability, as that will cost you in the long run.

Danny Hammond
Research Analyst
Security, Risk, Privacy & Compliance Practice
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

Mitigate security risks by developing an end-to-end process that ensures you are outsourcing your responsibilities and not your accountability.

Your Challenge

This research is designed to help organizations select an effective security outsourcing partner.

• A security outsourcing partner is a third-party service provider that offers security services on a contractual basis depending on client needs and requirements.
• An effective outsourcing partner can help an organization improve its security posture by providing access to more specialized security experts, tools, and technologies.
• One of the main challenges with selecting a security outsourcing partner is finding a partner that is a good fit for the organization's unique security needs and requirements.
• Security outsourcing partners typically have access to sensitive information and systems, so proper controls and safeguards must be in place to protect all sensitive assets.
• Without careful evaluation and due diligence to ensure that the partner is a good fit for the organization's security needs and requirements, it can be challenging to select an outsourcing partner.

Outsourcing is effective, but only if done right

• 83% of decision makers with in-house cybersecurity teams are considering outsourcing to an MSP (Syntax, 2021).
• 77% of IT leaders said cyberattacks were more frequent (Syntax, 2021).
• 51% of businesses suffered a data breach caused by a third party (Ponemon, 2021).

Common Obstacles

The problem with selecting an outsourcing partner isn’t a lack of qualified partners, it’s the lack of clarity about an organization's specific security needs.

• Most organizations do not have a clear understanding of their current security posture, their security goals, and the specific security services they require. Without a clear understanding of their needs, organizations may struggle to identify a partner that can meet their requirements.
• Breakdowns and lack of communication can be a significant obstacle, especially when clear lines of communication with partners, including regular check-ins, reporting, and incident response protocols, have not been clearly established.
• Ensuring that security partner's systems and processes integrate seamlessly with existing systems can be a challenge for most organizations. This is in addition to making sure that security partners have the necessary access and permissions to perform their services effectively.
• Adhering to security policies is rarely a priority to users, as compliance often feels like an interference to daily workflow. For a lot of organizations, security policies are not having the desired effect.

Source: IBM, 2022 Cost of a Data Breach; N=537.

Info-Tech’s methodology for selecting a security outsourcing partner

Determine your responsibilities

Determine what responsibilities you can outsource to a service partner. Analyze which responsibilities you should outsource versus keep in-house? Do you require a service partner based on identified responsibilities?

Scope your requirements

Refine the list of role-based requirements, variables, and features you will require. Use a well-known list of critical security controls as a framework to determine these activities and send out RFPs to pick the best candidate for your organization.

Manage your outsourcing program

Adopt a program to manage your third-party service security outsourcing. Trust your managed security service providers (MSSP) but verify their results to ensure you get the service level you were promised.

Select a Security Outsourcing Partner

Blueprint benefits

Insight summary

Overarching insight: You can outsource your responsibilities but not your accountability.

Determine what to outsource: Assess your responsibilities to determine which ones you can outsource. It is vital that an understanding of how outsourcing will affect the organization, and what cost savings, if any, to expect from outsourcing is clear in order to generate a list of responsibilities that can/should be outsourced.

Select the right partner: Create a list of variables to evaluate the MSSPs and determine which features are important to you. Evaluate all potential MSSPs and determine which one is right for your organization

Manage your MSSP: Align the MSSP to your organization. Adopt a program to monitor the MSSP which includes a long-term strategy to manage the MSSP.

Identifying security needs and requirements = Effective outsourcing program: Understanding your own security needs and requirements is key. Ensure your RFP covers the entire scope of your requirements; work with your identified partner on updates and adaptation, where necessary; and always monitor alignment to business objectives.

Measure the value of this blueprint

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Overall Impact: 8.9 /10

Overall Average Cost Saved: $22,950

Overall Average Days Saved: 9

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation
"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop
"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting
"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices

Holistically balance IT supply and demand to avoid overallocation.

Analyst perspective

Restore the right accountabilities for reconciling supply and demand.

"Who gets in trouble at the organization when too many projects are approved?

We’ve just exited a period of about 20-25 years where the answer to the above question was usually “nobody.” The officers of the corporation held nobody to account for the malinvestment of resources that comes from approving too many projects or having systemically unrealistic project due dates. Boards of directors failed to hold the officers accountable for that. And shareholders failed to hold boards of directors accountable for that.

But this is shifting right under our feet. Increasingly, PMOs are being managed with the mentality previously reserved for those in the finance department. In many cases, the PMOs are now reporting to the CFO! This represents a very simple and basic reversion to the concept of fiduciary duty: somebody will be held to account for the consumption of all those hours, and somebody should be the approver of projects who created the excess demand." – Barry Cousins Senior Director of Research, PMO Practice Info-Tech Research Group

Our understanding of the problem

This Research Is Designed For:

• IT leaders who lack actionable evidence of a resource-supply, work-demand imbalance.
• CIOs whose departments struggle to meet service and project delivery expectations with given resources.
• Portfolio managers, PMO directors, and project managers whose portfolio and project plans suffer due to unstable resource availability.

This Research Will Help You:

• Build trustworthy resource capacity data to support service and project portfolio management.
• Develop sustainable resource management practices to help you estimate, and continually validate, your true resource capacity for services and projects.
• Identify the demands that deplete your resource capacity without creating value for IT.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• Steering committee and C-suite management who want to improve IT’s delivery of projects.
• Project sponsors that want to ensure their projects get the promised resource time by their project managers.

This Research Will Help Them:

• Ensure sufficient supply of time for projects to be successfully completed with high quality.
• Communicate the new resource management practice and get stakeholder buy-in.

Executive summary

Situation

• As CIO, you oversee a department that lacks the resource capacity to adequately meet organizational demand for new projects and services. As a result, project quality and timelines suffer, and service delivery lags.
• You need a resource management strategy to help bring balance to supply and demand in order to improve IT’s ability to deliver.

Complication

• The shift to matrix work structures has strained traditional methods of time tracking. Day-to-day demand is chaotic; staff are pulled in multiple directions by numerous people, making usable capacity data elusive.
• The executive team approves too many projects, but is not held to account for the overspend on time. Instead, the IT worker is made liable, expected to simply get things done under excessive demands.

Resolution

• Instill a culture of capacity awareness. For years, the project portfolio management (PPM) industry has helped IT departments report on demand and usage, but it has largely failed to make capacity part of the conversation. This research helps inject capacity awareness into project and service portfolio planning, enabling IT to get proactive about constraints before overallocation spirals, and project and service delivery suffers.
• Build a sustainable process. Efforts to get better at resource management often falter when you try to get too granular too quickly. Info-Tech’s approach starts at a high level, ensuring that capacity data is accurate and usable, and that IT’s process discipline is mature enough to maintain the data, before drilling down into greater levels of precision.
• Establish a capacity hub. You will ultimately need a tool to help provide ongoing resource visibility. Follow the advice in this blueprint to help with your tool selection and ensure the reporting needs of both your team and executives are met.

Info-Tech Insight

1. Take a realistic approach to resource management. New organizational realities have made traditional, rigorous resource projections impossible to maintain. Accept reality and get realistic about where IT’s time goes.
2. Make IT’s capacity perpetually transparent. The best way to ensure projects are approved and scheduled based upon the availability of the right teams and skills is to shine a light into IT’s capacity and hold decision makers to account with usable capacity reports.

The availability of staff time is rarely factored into IT project and service delivery commitments

As a result, a lot gets promised and worked on, and staff are always busy, but very little actually gets done – at least not within given timelines or to expected levels of quality.

Organizations tend to bite off more than they can chew when it comes to project and service delivery commitments involving IT resources.

While the need for businesses to make an excess of IT commitments is understandable, the impacts of systemically overallocating IT are clearly negative:

• Stakeholder relations suffer. Promises are made to the business that can’t be met by IT.
• IT delivery suffers. Project timelines and quality frequently suffer, and service support regularly lags.
• Employee engagement suffers. Anxiety and stress levels are consistently high among IT staff, while morale and engagement levels are low.

76% of organizations say they have too many projects on the go and an unmanageable and ever-growing backlog of things to get to. (Cooper, 2014)

Almost 70% of workers feel as though they have too much work on their plates and not enough time to do it. (Reynolds, 2016)

Resource management can help to improve workloads and project results, but traditional approaches commonly fall short

Traditional approaches to resource management suffer from a fundamental misconception about the availability of time in 2017.

The concept of resource management comes from a pre-World Wide Web era, when resource and project plans could be based on a relatively stable set of assumptions.

In the old paradigm, the availability of time was fairly predictable, as was the demand for IT services, so there was value to investing time into rigorous demand forecasts and planning.

Resource projections could be based in a secure set of assumptions – i.e. 8 hour days, 40 hour weeks – and staff had the time to support detailed resource management processes that provided accurate usage data.

Old Realities

• Predictability. Change tended to be slow and deliberate, providing more stability for advanced, rigorous demand forecasts and planning.
• Fixed hierarchy. Tasks, priorities, and decisions were communicated through a fixed chain of command.
• Single-task focus. The old reality was more accommodating to sustained focus on one task at a time.

96% of organizations report problems with the accuracy of information on employee timesheets. (Dimensional, 2013)

Old reality resource forecasting inevitably falters under the weight of unpredictable demands and constant distractions

New realities are causing demands on workers’ time to be unpredictable and unrelenting, making a sustained focus on a specific task for any length of time elusive.

Part of the old resource management mythology is the idea that a person can do (for example) eight different one-hour tasks in eight hours of continuous work. This idea has gone from harmlessly mistaken to grossly unrealistic.

The predictability and focus have given way to more chaotic workplace realities. Technology is ubiquitous, and the demand for IT services is constant.

A day in IT is characterized by frequent task-switching, regular interruptions, and an influx of technology-enabled distractions.

Every 3 minutes and 5 seconds: How often the typical office worker switches tasks, either through self-directed or other-directed interruptions. (Schulte, 2015)

12 minutes, 40 seconds: The average amount of time in-between face-to-face interruptions in matrix organizations. (Anderson, 2015)

23 minutes, 15 seconds: The average amount of time it takes to become on task, productive, and focused again after an interruption. (Schulte, 2015)

759 hours: The average number of hours lost per employee annually due to distractions and interruptions. (Huth, 2015)

The validity of traditional, rigorous resource planning has long been an illusion. New realities are making the sustained focus and stable assumptions that old reality projections relied on all but impossible to maintain.

For resource management practices to be effective, they need to evolve to meet new realities

New organizational realities have exacerbated traditional approaches to time tracking, making accurate and usable resource data elusive.

The technology revolution that began in the 1990s ushered in a new paradigm in organizational structures. Matrix reporting structures, diminished supervision of knowledge workers, massive multi-tasking, and a continuous stream of information and communications from the outside world have smashed the predictability and stability of the old paradigm.

The resource management industry has largely failed to evolve. It remains stubbornly rooted in old realities, relying on calculations and rollups that become increasingly unsustainable and irrelevant in our high-autonomy staff cultures and interruption-driven work days.

New Realities

• Unpredictable. Technologies and organizational strategies change before traditional IT demand forecasts and project plans can be realized.
• Matrix management. Staff can be accountable to multiple project managers and functional managers at any given time.
• Multi-task focus. In the new reality, workers’ attentions are scattered across multiple tasks and projects at any given time.

87% of organizations report challenges with traditional methods of time tracking and reporting. (Dimensional, 2013)

40% of working time is not tracked or tracked inaccurately by staff. (actiTIME, 2016)

Poor resource management practices cost organizations dearly

While time is money, the statistics around resource visibility and utilization suggest that the vast majority of organizations don’t spend their available time all that wisely.

Research shows that ineffective resource management directly impacts an organization’s bottom line, contributing to such cost drains as the systemic late delivery of projects and increased project costs.

Despite this, the majority of organizations fail to treat staff time like the precious commodity it is.

As the results of a 2016 survey show, the top three pain points for IT and PMO leaders all revolve around a wider cultural negligence concerning staff time (Alexander, TechRepublic, 2016):

• Overcommitted resources
• Constant change that affects staff assignments
• An inability to prioritize shared resources

Top risks associated with poor resource management

Inability to complete projects on time – 52%

Inability to innovate fast enough – 39%

Increased project costs – 38%

Missed business opportunities – 34%

Dissatisfied customers or clients – 32%

12 times more waste – Organizations with poor resource management practices waste nearly 12 times more resource hours than high-performing organizations. (PMI, 2014)

The concept of fiduciary duty represents the best way to bring balance to supply and demand, and improve project outcomes

Unless someone is accountable for controlling the consumption of staff hours, too much work will get approved and committed to without evidence of sufficient resourcing.

Who is accountable for controlling the consumption of staff hours?

In many ways, no question is more important to the organization’s bottom line – and certainly, to the effectiveness of a resource management strategy.

Historically, the answer would have been the executive layer of the organization. However, in the 1990s management largely abdicated its obligation to control resources and expenditures via “employee empowerment.”

Controls on approvals became less rigid, and accountability for choosing what to do (and not do) shifted onto the shoulders of the individual worker. This creates a current paradigm where no one is accountable for the malinvestment…

…of resources that comes from approving too many projects. Instead, it’s up to individual workers to sink-or-swim, as they attempt to reconcile, day after day, seemingly infinite organizational demand with their finite supply of working hours.

If your organization has higher demand (i.e. approved project work) than supply (i.e. people’s time), your staff will be the final decision makers on what does and does NOT get worked on.

Effective time leadership distinguishes top performing senior executives

"Everything requires time… It is the one truly universal condition. All work takes place in time and uses up time. Yet most people take for granted this unique, irreplaceable and necessary resource. Nothing else, perhaps, distinguishes effective executives as much as their tender loving care of time." – Peter Drucker (quoted in Frank)

67% of employees surveyed believe their CEOs focus too much on decisions based in short-term financial results and not enough time on decisions that create a stable, positive workplace for staff. (2016 Edelman Trust Barometer)

Bring balance to supply and demand with realistic resource management practices

Use Info-Tech’s approach to resource management to capture an accurate view of where your time goes and achieve sustained visibility into your capacity for new projects.

Realistic project resource management starts by aligning demand with capacity, and then developing tactics to sustain alignment, even in the chaos of our fast-paced, rapidly changing, interruption-driven project environments.

This blueprint will help you develop practices to promote and maintain accurate resourcing data, while developing tactics to continually inform decision makers’ assumptions about how much capacity is realistically available for project work.

This research follows a three-phase approach to sustainable practices:

1. Take Stock of Organizational Supply and Demand
2. Design a Realistic Resource Management Process
3. Implement Sustainable Resource Management Practices

Info-Tech’s three-phase framework is structured around a practical, tactical approach to resource management. It’s not about what you put together as a one-time snapshot. It’s about what you can and will maintain every week, even during a crisis. When you stop maintaining resource management data, it’s nearly impossible to catch up and you’re usually forced to start fresh.

Info-Tech’s approach is rooted in our seven dimensions of resource management

Action the decision points across Info-Tech’s seven dimensions to ensure your resource management process is guided by realistic data and process goals.

Default project vs. non-project ratio

How much time is available for projects once non-project demands are factored in?

Reporting frequency

How often is the allocation data verified, reconciled, and reported for use?

Forecast horizon

How far into the future can you realistically predict resource supply?

Scope of allocation

To whom is time allocated?

Allocation cadence

How long is each allocation period?

Granularity of time allocation

What’s the smallest unit of time to allocate?

Granularity of work assignment

What is time allocated to?

This blueprint will help you make the right decisions for your organization across each of these dimensions to ensure your resource management practices match your current process maturity levels.

Once your framework is defined, we’ll equip you with a tactical plan to help keep supply and demand continually balanced

This blueprint will help you customize a playbook to ensure your allocations are perpetually balanced week after week, month after month.

Developing a process is one thing, sustaining it is another.

The goal of this research isn’t just to achieve a one-time balancing of workloads and expect that this will stand the test of time.

The true test of a resource management process is how well it facilitates the flow of accurate and usable data as workloads become chaotic, and fires and crises erupt.

• Info-Tech’s approach will help you develop a playbook and a “rebalancing routine” that will help ensure your allocations remain perpetually current and balanced.
• The sample routine to the right shows you an example of what this rebalancing process will look like (customizing this process is covered in Phase 3 of the blueprint).

Sample “rebalancing” routine

• Maintain a comprehensive list of the sources of demand (i.e. document the matrix).
• Catalog the demand.
• Allocate the supply.
• Forecast the capacity to your forecast horizon.
• Identify and prepare work packages or tasks for unsatisfied demand to ensure that supply can be utilized if it becomes free.
• Reconcile any imbalance by repeating steps 1-5 on update frequency, say, weekly or monthly.

Info-Tech’s method is complemented by a suite of resource management tools and templates

Each phase of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help plan your resource management strategy and sustain your process implementation.

Resource management depends on the flow of information and data from the project level up to functional managers, project managers, and beyond – CIOs, steering committees, and senior executives.

Tools are required to help plan, organize, and facilitate this flow, and each phase of this blueprint is centered around tools and templates to help you successfully support your process implementation.

Take Stock of Organizational Supply and Demand

Tools and Templates:

• Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator (.xlsx)
• Time Audit Workbook (.xlsx)
• Time-Tracking Survey Email Template (.docx)

Design a Realistic Resource Management Process

Tools and Templates:

• Resource Management Playbook (.docx)
• PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script (.docx)
• Portfolio Manager Lite (.xlsx)

Implement Sustainable Resource Management Practices

Tools and Templates:

• Process Pilot Plan Template (.docx)
• Portfolio Analyst Job Description (.docx)
• Resource Management Communications Template (.pptx)

Use Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite to support your new process without a heavy upfront investment in tools

Spreadsheets can provide a viable alternative for organizations not ready to invest in an expensive tool, or for those not getting what they need from their commercial selections.

While homegrown solutions like spreadsheets and intranet sites lack the robust functionality of commercial offerings, they have dramatically lower complexity and cost-in-use.

Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite is a sophisticated, scalable, and highly customizable spreadsheet-based solution that will get your new resource management process up and running, without a heavy upfront cost.

Kinds of PPM solutions used by Info-Tech clients

Homemade – 46%

Commercial – 33%

No Solution – 21%

(Info-Tech Research Group (2016), N=433)

Samples of Portfolio Manager Lite's output and reporting tabs

Info-Tech’s approach to resource management is part of our larger project portfolio management framework

This blueprint will help you master the art of resource management and set you up for greater success in other project portfolio management capabilities.

Resource management is one capability within Info-Tech’s larger project portfolio management (PPM) framework.

Resource visibility and capacity awareness permeates the whole of PPM, helping to ensure the right intake decisions get made, and projects are scheduled according to resource and skill availability.

Whether you have an existing PPM strategy that you are looking to optimize or you are just starting on your PPM journey, this blueprint will help you situate your resource management processes within a larger project and portfolio framework.

Info-Tech’ s PPM framework is based on extensive research and practical application, and complements industry standards such as those offered by PMI and ISACA.

Realize the value that improved resource management practices could bring to your organization

Spend your company’s HR dollars more efficiently.

Improved resource management and capacity awareness will allow your organization to improve resource utilization and increase project throughput.

CIOs, PMOs, and portfolio managers can use this blueprint to improve the alignment between supply and demand. You should be able to gauge the value through the following metrics:

Near-Term Success Metrics (6 to 12 months)

• Increased frequency of currency (i.e. more accurate and usable resource data and reports).
• Improved job satisfaction from project resources due to more even workloads.
• Better ability to schedule project start dates and estimate end dates due to recourse visibility.

Long-Term Success Metrics (12 to 24 months)

• More projects completed on time.
• Reclaimed capacity for project work.
• A reduction in resource waste and increased resource utilization on productive project work.
• Ability to track estimated vs. actual budget and work effort on projects.

In the past 12 months, Info-Tech clients have reported an average measured value rating of $550,000 from the purchase of workshops based on this research.

Info-Tech client masters resource management by shifting the focus to capacity forecasting

CASE STUDY

Industry Education

Source Info-Tech Client

Situation

• There are more than 200 people in the IT organization.
• IT is essentially a shared services environment with clients spanning multiple institutions across a wide geography.
• The PMO identified dedicated resources for resource management.

Complication

• The definition of “resource management” was constantly shifting between accounting the past (i.e. time records), the present (i.e. work assignments), and the future (i.e. long term project allocations).
• The task data set (i.e. for current work assignments) was not aligned to the historic time records or future capacity.
• It was difficult to predict or account for the spend, which exceeded 30,000 hours per month.

“We’re told we can’t say NO to projects. But this new tool set and approach allows us to give an informed WHEN.” – Senior PMO Director, Education

Resolution

• The leadership decided to forecast and communicate their resource capacity on a 3-4 month forecast horizon using Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager 2017.
• Unallocated resource capacity was identified within certain skill sets that had previously been assessed as fully allocated. While some of the more high-visibility staff were indeed overallocated, other more junior personnel had been systemically underutilized on projects.
• The high demand for IT project resourcing was immediately placed in the context of a believable, credible expression of supply.

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

“Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful.”

Guided Implementation

“Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track.”

Workshop

“We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place.”

Consulting

“Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project.”

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks used throughout all four options

Establish Realistic IT Resource Management Practices – project overview

Workshop overview

Contact your account representative or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

Phase 1

Take Stock of Organizational Resource Supply and Demand

Phase 1 Outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 1: Take Stock of Organizational Resource Supply and Demand

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 1-2 weeks

Step 1.1: Analyze the current state

Start with an analyst kick-off call:

• Discuss the goals, aims, benefits, and challenges of resource management
• Identify who is currently accountable for balancing resource supply and demand

Then complete these activities…

• Assess the current distribution of accountabilities in resource management
• Delve into your current problems to uncover root causes
• Make a go/no-go decision on developing a new resource management practice

Step 1.2: Estimate your supply and demand

Review findings with analyst:

• Root causes of resource management
• Your current impression about the resource supply-demand imbalance

Then complete these activities…

• Estimate your resource capacity for each role
• Estimate your project/non-project demand on resources
• Validate the findings with a time-tracking survey

With these tools & templates:

• Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator
• Time-Tracking Survey Email Template

Phase 1 Results & Insights:

A matrix organization creates many small, untraceable demands that are often overlooked in resource management efforts, which leads to underestimating total demand and overcommitting resources. To capture them and enhance the success of your resource management effort, focus on completeness rather than precision. Precision of data will improve over time as your process maturity grows.

Step 1.1: Set a resource management course of action

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Determine your resource management process capability level
• Assess how accountability for resource management is currently distributed

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO / IT Director
• PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
• Functional / Resource Managers
• Project Managers

Outcomes of this step

• Current distribution of accountability for resource management practice
• Root-cause analysis of resourcing challenges facing the organization
• Commitment to implementing a right-sized resource management practice

“Too many projects, not enough resources” is the reality of most IT environments

A profound imbalance between demand (i.e. approved project work and service delivery commitments) and supply (i.e. people’s time) is the top challenge IT departments face today..

In today’s organizations, the desires of business units for new products and enhancements, and the appetites of senior leadership to approve more and more projects for those products and services, far outstrip IT’s ability to realistically deliver on everything.

The vast majority of IT departments lack the resourcing to meet project demand – especially given the fact that day-to-day operational demands frequently trump project work.

As a result, project throughput suffers – and with it, IT’s reputation within the organization.

Info-Tech Insight

Where does the time go? The portfolio manager (or equivalent) should function as the accounting department for time, showing what’s available in IT’s human resources budget for projects and providing ongoing visibility into how that budget of time is being spent.

Resource management can help to even out staff workloads and improve project and service delivery results

As the results of a recent survey* show, the top three pain points for IT and PMO leaders all revolve around a wider cultural negligence concerning staff time:

• Overcommitted resources
• Constant change that affects staff assignments
• An inability to prioritize shared resources

A resource management strategy can help to alleviate these pain points and reconcile the imbalance between supply and demand by achieving the following outcomes:

• Improving resource visibility
• Reducing overallocation, and accordingly, resource stress
• Reducing project delay
• Improving resource efficiency and productivity

Top risks associated with poor resource management

Inability to complete projects on time – 52%

Inability to innovate fast enough – 39%

Increased project costs – 38%

Missed business opportunities – 34%

Dissatisfied customers or clients – 32%

12 times more waste – Organizations with poor resource management practices waste nearly 12 times more resource hours than high-performing organizations. (PMI, 2014)

Resource management is a core process in Info-Tech’s project portfolio management framework

Project portfolio management (PPM) creates a stable and secure infrastructure around projects.

PPM’s goal is to maximize the throughput of projects that provide strategic and operational value to the organization. To do this, a PPM strategy must help to:

If you don’t yet have a PPM strategy in place, or would like to revisit your existing PPM strategy before implementing resource management practices, see Info-Tech’s blueprint, Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy.

Effective resource management is rooted in a relatively simple set of questions

However, while the questions are rather simple, the answers become complicated by challenges unique to matrix organizations and other workplace realities in 2017.

To support the goals of PPM more generally, resource management must (1) supply quality work-hours to approved and ongoing projects, and (2) supply reliable data with which to steer the project portfolio.

To do this, a resource management strategy must address a relatively straightforward set of questions.

Key Questions

• Who assigns the resources?
• Who feeds the data on resources?
• How do we make sure it’s valid?
• How do we handle contingencies when projects are late or when availability changes?

Challenges

• Matrix organizations require project workers to answer to many masters and balance project work with “keep the lights on” activities and other administrative work.
• Interruptions, distractions, and divided attention create consistent challenges for workplace productivity.

"In matrix organizations, complicated processes and tools get implemented to answer the deceptively simple question “what’s Bob going to work on over the next few months?” Inevitably, the data captured becomes the focus of scrutiny as functional and project managers complain about data inaccuracy while simultaneously remaining reluctant to invest the effort necessary to improve quality." – Kiron Bondale

Determine your organization’s resource management capability level with a maturity assessment

1.1.1
10 minutes

Input

• Organizational strategy and culture

Output

• Resource management capability level

Materials

• N/A

Participants

• PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

Kick-off the discussion on the resource management process by deciding which capability level most accurately describes your organization’s current state.

If resources are poorly managed, they prioritize work based on consequences rather than on meeting demand

As a result, matrix organizations are collectively steered by each resource and its individual motives, not by managers, executives, or organizational strategy.

In a matrix organization, demands on a resource’s time come from many directions, each demand unaware of the others. Resources are expected to prioritize their work, but they typically lack the authority to formally reject demand, so demand frequently outstrips the supply of work-hours the resource can deliver.

When this happens, the resource has three options:

1. Work more hours, typically without compensation.
2. Choose tasks not to do in a way that minimizes personal consequences.
3. Diminish work quality to meet quantity demands.

The result is an unsustainable system for those involved:

1. Resources cannot meet expectations, leading to frustration and disengagement.
2. Managers cannot deliver on the projects or services they manage and struggle to retain skilled resources who are looking elsewhere for “greener pastures.”
3. Executives cannot execute strategic plans as they lose decision-making power over their resources.

Scope your resource management practices within a matrix organization by asking “who?”

Resource management boils down to a seemingly simple question: how do we balance supply and demand? Balancing requires a decision maker to make choices; however, in a matrix organization, identifying this decision maker is not straightforward:

Balance

• Who decides how much capacity should be dedicated to project work versus administrative or operational work?
• Who decides how to respond to unexpected changes in supply or demand?

Supply

• Who decides how much total capacity we have for each necessary skill set?
• Who manages the contingency, or redundancy, of capacity?
• Who validates the capacity supply as a whole?
• Who decides what to report as unexpected changes in supply (and to whom)?

Demand

• Who generates demand on the resource that can be controlled by their manager?
• Who generates demand on the capacity that cannot be controlled by their manager?
• Who validates the demand on capacity as a whole?
• Who decides what to report as unexpected changes in demand (and to whom)?

The individual who has the authority to make choices, and who is ultimately liable for those decisions, is an accountable person. In a matrix organization, accountability is dispersed, sometimes spilling over to those without the necessary authority.

To effectively balance supply and demand, senior management must be held accountable

Differentiate between responsibility and accountability to manage the organization’s project portfolio effectively.

Responsibility

The responsible party is the individual (or group) who actually completes the task.

Responsibility can be shared.

VS.

Accountability

The accountable person is the individual who has the authority to make choices, and is ultimately answerable for the decision.

Accountability cannot be shared.

Resources often do not have the necessary scope of authority to make resource management choices, so they can never be truly accountable for the project portfolio. Instead, resources are accountable for making available trustworthy data, so the right people can make choices driven by organizational strategy.

The next activity will assess how accountability for resource management is currently distributed in your organization.

Assess the current distribution of accountability for resource management practice

1.1.2
15 minutes

Input

• Organizational strategy and culture

Output

• Current distribution of accountabilities for resource management

Materials

• Whiteboard/flip chart
• Markers

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager

Below is a list of tasks in resource management that require choices. Discuss who is currently accountable and whether they have the right authority and ability to deliver on that accountability.

Develop coordination between project and functional managers to optimize resource management

Because resources are invariably responsible for both project and non-project work, efforts to procure capacity for projects cannot exist in isolation.

IT departments need many different technical skill sets at their disposal for their day-to-day operations and services, as well as for projects. A limited hiring budget for IT restricts the number of hires with any given skill, forcing IT to share resources between service and project portfolios.

This resource sharing produces a matrix organization divided along the lines of service and projects. Functional and project managers provide respective oversight for services and projects. Resources split their available work-hours toward service and project tasks according to priority – in theory.

However, in practice, two major challenges exist:

1. Poor coordination between functional and project managers causes commitments beyond resource capacity, disputes about resource oversight, and animosity among management, all while resources struggle to balance unclear priorities.
2. Resources have a “third boss,” namely uncontrolled demands from the rest of the business, which lack both visibility and accountability.

Resource management processes must account for the numerous small demands generated in a matrix organization

Avoid going bankrupt $20 at a time: small demands add up to a significant chunk of work-hours.

Because resource managers must cover both projects and services within IT, the typical solution to allocation problems in matrix organizations is to escalate the urgency and severity of demands by involving the executive steering committee. Unfortunately, the steering committee cannot expend time and resources on all demands. Instead, they often set a minimum threshold for cases – 100-1,000 work-hours depending on the organization.

Under this resource management practice, small demands – especially the quick-fixes and little projects from “the third boss” – continue to erode project capacity. Eventually, projects fail to get resources because pesky small demands have no restrictions on the resources they consumed.

Realistic resource management needs to account for demand from all three bosses; however…

Info-Tech Insight

Excess project or service request intake channels lead to the proliferation of “off-the-grid” projects and tasks that lack visibility from the IT leadership. This can indicate that there may be too much red tape: that is, the request process is made too complex or cumbersome. Consider simplifying the request process and bring IT’s visibility into those requests.

Interrogate your resource management problems to uncover root causes

1.1.3
30 minutes to 1 hour

Input

• Organizational strategy and culture

Output

• Root causes of resource management failures

Materials

• Whiteboard/flip chart
• Sticky notes
• Markers

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
• Functional Managers
• Project Managers

1. Pick a starting problem statement in resource management. e.g. projects can’t get resource work-hours.
2. Ask the participants “why”? Use three generic headings – people, processes, and technology – to keep participants focused. Keep the responses solution-agnostic: do not jump to solutions. If you have a large group, divide into smaller groups and use sticky notes to encourage more participation in this brainstorming step.

3. Determine the root cause by iteratively asking “why?” up to five times, or until the chain of whys comes full circle. (i.e. Why A? B. Why B? C. Why C? A.) See below for an example.

1.1.2 Example of a root-cause analysis: people

The following is a non-exhaustive example:

Right-size your resource management strategy with Info-Tech’s realistic resource management practice

If precise, accurate, and complete data on resource supply and demand was consistently available, reporting on project capacity would be easy. Such data would provide managers complete control over a resource’s time, like a foreman at a construction site. However, this theoretical scenario is incompatible with today’s matrixed workplace:

• Sources of demand can lie outside IT’s control.
• Demand is generated chaotically, with little predictability.
• Resources work with minimal supervision.

Collecting and maintaining resource data is therefore nearly impossible:

• Achieving perfect data accuracy creates unnecessary overhead.
• Non-compliance by one project or resource makes your entire data set unusable for resource management.

This blueprint will guide you through right-sizing your resource management efforts to achieve maximum value-to-effort ratio and sustainability.

Choose your resource management course of action

Portfolio managers looking for a resource management solution have three mutually exclusive options:

Option A: Do Nothing

• Rely on expert judgment and intuition to make portfolio choices.
• Allow the third boss to dictate the demands of your resources.

Option B: Get Precise

• Aim for granularity and precision of data with a solution that may demand more capacity than is realistically available by hiring, outsourcing, or over-allocating people’s time.
• Require detailed, accurate time sheets for all project tasks.
• For those choosing this option, proceed to Info-Tech’s Select and Implement a PPM Solution.

Option C: Get Realistic

• Balance capacity supply and demand using abstraction.
• Implement right-sized resource management practices that rely on realistic, high-level capacity estimates.
• Reduce instability in data by focusing on resource capacity, rather than granular project demands and task level details.

This blueprint takes you through the steps necessary to accomplish Option C, using Info-Tech’s tools and templates for managing your resources.

Step 1.2: Create realistic estimates of supply and demand

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Create a realistic estimate of project capacity
• Map all sources of demand on resources at a high level
• Validate your supply and demand assumptions by directly surveying your resources

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Project Managers (optional)
• Functional / Resource Managers (optional)
• Project Resources (optional)

Outcomes of this step

• A realistic estimate of your total and project capacity, as well as project and non-project demand on their time
• Quantitative insight into the resourcing challenges facing the organization
• Results from a time-tracking survey, which are used to validate the assumptions made for estimating resource supply and demand

Create a realistic estimate of your project capacity with Info-Tech’s Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Take an iterative approach to capacity estimates: use your assumptions to create a meaningful estimate, and then validate with your staff to improve its accuracy.

Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator to create a realistic estimate of your project capacity.

The calculator tool requires minimal upfront staff participation: you can obtain meaningful results with participation from even a single person, with insight on the distribution of your resources and their average work week or month. As the number of participants increases, the quality of analysis will improve.

The first half of this step guides you through how to use the calculator. The second half provides tactical advice on how to gather additional data and validate your resourcing data with your staff.

Download Info-Tech’s Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Info-Tech Insight

What’s first, process or tools? Remember that process determines the quality of your data while data quality limits the tool’s utility. Without quality data, you cannot evaluate the success of the tool, so nail down your collection process first.

Break down your resource capacity into high-level buckets of time for each role

1.2.1
30 minutes - 1 hour

Input

• Staff resource types
• Average work week
• Estimated allocations

Output

A realistic estimate of project capacity

Materials

Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Participants

• PMO Director
• Resource/Functional Managers (optional)

We define four high-level buckets of resource time:

• Absence: on average, a resource spends 14% of the year on vacation, statutory holidays, business holidays and other forms of absenteeism.
• Administrative: time spent on meetings, recordkeeping, etc.
• Operational: keeping the lights on; reactive work.
• Projects: time to work on projects; typically, this bucket of time is whatever’s left from the above.

Instructions for working through Tab 2 of the Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator are provided in the next two sections. Follow along to obtain your breakdown of annual resource capacity in a pie chart.

Break down your resource capacity into high-level buckets of time for each role

1.2.1
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 2: Capacity Supply

Discover how many work-hours are at your disposal by first accounting for absences.

1. Compile a list of each of the roles within your department.
2. Enter the number of staff currently performing each role.
3. Enter the number of hours in a typical work week for each role.
4. Enter the foreseeable out-of-office time (vacation, sick time, etc.) Typically, this value is 12-16% depending on the region.

Hours per Year represents your total resource capacity for each role, as well as the entire department. This column is automatically calculated.

Working Time per Year represents your total resource capacity minus time employees are expected to spend out of office. This column is automatically calculated.

Info-Tech Insight

Example for a five-day work week:

• 2 weeks (10 days) of statutory holidays
• 3 weeks of vacation
• 1.4 weeks (7 days) of sick days on average
• 1 week (5 days) for company holidays

Result: 7.4/52 weeks’ absence = 14.2%

Break down your resource capacity into high-level buckets of time for each role (continued)

1.2.1
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 2: Capacity Supply

Determine the current distribution of your resources’ time and your confidence in whether the resources indeed supply those times.

5. Enter the percentage of working time across each role that, on an annual basis, goes toward administrative duties (non-project meetings, training, time spent checking email, etc.) and keep-the-lights-on work (e.g. support and maintenance work).

While these percentages will vary by individual, a high-level estimate across each role will suffice for the purposes of this activity.

6. Express how confident you are in each resource being able to deliver the calculated project work hours in percentages.

Another interpretation for supply confidence is “supply control”: estimate your current ability to control this distribution of working time to meet the changing needs in percentages.

Percentage of your working time that goes toward project work is calculated based upon what’s left after your non-project working time allocations have been subtracted.

Create a realistic estimate of the demand from your project portfolio with the T-shirt sizing technique

1.2.2
15 minutes - 30 minutes

Input

• Average work-hours for a project
• List of projects
• PPM Current State Scorecard

Output

A realistic estimate of resource demand from your project portfolio

Materials

Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Participants

• PMO Director
• Project Managers (optional)

Quickly re-express the size of your project portfolio in resource hours required.

Estimating the resources required for a project in a project backlog can take a lot of effort. Rather than trying to create an accurate estimate for each project, a set of standard project sizes (often referred to as the “T-shirt sizing” technique) will be sufficiently accurate for estimating your project backlog’s overall demand.

Instructions for working through Tab 3 of the tool are provided here and in the next section.

1. For each type of project, enter the average number for work-hours.

Improve your estimate of demand from your project portfolio by accounting for unproductive capacity spending

1.2.2
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 3: Project Demand

2. Using your list of projects, enter the number of projects for each appropriate field.

3. Enter your resource waste data from the PPM Current State Scorecard (see next section). Alternatively, enter your best guess on how much project capacity is spent wastefully per category.

Info-Tech Insight

The calculator estimates the project demand by T-shirt-sizing the work-hours required by projects to be delivered within the next 12 months and then adding the corresponding wasted capacity. This may be a pessimistic estimate, but it is more realistic because projects tend to be delivered late more than early.

Estimate how much project capacity is wasted with Info-Tech’s PPM Current State Scorecard

Call 1-888-670-8889 or contact your Account Manager for more information.

This step is highly recommended but not required.

Info-Tech’s PPM Current State Scorecard diagnostic provides a comprehensive view of your portfolio management strengths and weaknesses, including project portfolio management, project management, customer management, and resource utilization.

Use the wisdom-of-the-crowd to estimate resource waste in:

• Cancelled projects
• Inefficiency
• Suboptimal assignment of resources
• Unassigned resources
• Analyzing, fixing, and redeploying

50% of PPM resource is wasted on average, effectively halving your available project capacity.

Estimate non-project demand on your resources by role

1.2.3
45 minutes - 1 hour

Input

• Organizational chart
• Knowledge of staff non-project demand

Output

Documented non-project demands and their estimated degree of fluctuation

Materials

Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Participants

• PMO Director
• Functional Managers (optional)

Document non-project demand that could eat into your project capacity.

When discussing project demands, non-project demands (administrative and operational) are often underestimated and downplayed – even though, in reality, they take a de facto higher priority to project work. Use Tab 4 of the tool to document these non-project demands, as well as their sources.

1. Choose a role using a drop-down list.

2. Enter the type and the source of the demand.

3. Enter the size and the frequency of the demand in hours.

4. Estimate how stable the non-project demands are for each role.

Examine and discuss your supply-demand analysis report

1.2.4
30 minutes - 1 hour

Input

Completed Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Output

Supply-Demand Analysis Report

Materials

Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Participants

• PMO Director
• Functional Managers
• Project Managers

Start a data-driven discussion on resource management using the capacity supply-demand analysis report.

Tab 5 of the calculator is a report that contains the following analysis:

1. Overall resource capacity supply and demand gap
2. Project capacity supply vs. demand gap
3. Non-project capacity supply vs. demand balance
4. Resource capacity confidence

Each analysis is described and explained in the following four sections. Examine the report and discuss the following among the activity participants:

1. How is your perception of the current resource capacity supply-demand balance affected by this analysis? How is it confirmed? Is it changed?
2. Perform a root-cause analysis of problems revealed by the report. For each observation, ask “why?” repeatedly – generally, you can arrive at the root cause in four iterations.
3. Refer back to Activity 1.1.2: current distribution of accountability for resource management. In your situation, how would you prioritize which resource management tasks to improve? Who are the involved stakeholders?

Examine your supply-demand analysis report: overall resource capacity gap

1.2.4
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 5: Supply-Demand Analysis

1. Examine your resource capacity supply and demand gap.

The top of the report on Tab 5 shows a breakdown of your annual resource supply and demand, with resource capacity shown in both total hours and percentage of the total. For the purposes of the analysis, absence is averaged. If total demand is less than available resource supply, the surplus capacity will be displayed as “Free Capacity” on the demand side.

The Supply & Demand Analysis table displays the realistic project capacity, which is calculated by subtracting non-project supply deficit from the project capacity. This is based on the assumption that all non-project work must get done. The difference between the project demand and the realistic project capacity is your supply-demand gap, in work-hours.

If your supply-demand gap is zero, recognize that the project demand does not take into account the project backlog: it only takes into account the projects that are expected to be delivered within the next 12 months.

Examine your supply-demand analysis report: project capacity gap

1.2.4
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 5: Supply-Demand Analysis

2. Examine your project capacity supply vs. demand gap.

The project capacity supply and demand analysis compares your available annual project capacity with the size of your project portfolio, expressed in work-hours.

The supply side is further broken down to productive vs. wasted project capacity. The demand side is broken down to three buckets of projects: those that are active, those that sit in the backlog, and those that are expected to be added within 12 months. Percentage values are expressed in terms of total project capacity.

A key observation here is the limitation to which reducing wasteful spending of resources can get to the project portfolio backlog. In this example, even a theoretical scenario of 100% productive project capacity will not likely result in net shrinkage of the project portfolio backlog. To achieve that, either the total project capacity must be increased, or less projects must be approved.

Note: the work-hours necessary for delivering projects that are expected to be completed within 12 months is not shown in this visualization, as they should be represented within the other three categories of projects.

Examine your supply-demand analysis report: non-project capacity gap

1.2.4
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 5: Supply-Demand Analysis

3. Drill down on the non-project capacity supply-demand balance by each role.

The non-project capacity supply and demand analysis compares your available non-project capacity and their demands in a year, for each role, in work-hours.

With this chart, you can:

1. Observe which roles are “running hot,” (i.e. they have more demand than available supply).
2. Verify your non-project/project supply ratio assumptions in Tab 2 of the tool / Activity 1.2.1.

Tab 5 also provides similar breakdowns for administrative and keep-the-lights-on capacity supply and demand by each role.

Examine your supply-demand analysis report: resource capacity confidence (RCC)

1.2.4
Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, Tab 5: Supply-Demand Analysis

4. Examine your resource capacity confidence.

In our approach, we introduce a metric called Resource Capacity Confidence (RCC). Conceptually, RCC is defined as follows:

Resource Capacity Confidence = SC × DS × SDR

In this context, RCC can be defined as follows:

"Given the uncertainty that our resources can supply hours according to the assumed project/non-project ratio, the fluctuations in non-project demand, and the overall deficit in project capacity, there is about 50% chance that we will be able to deliver the projects we are expected to deliver within the next 12 months."

Case study: Non-project work is probably taking far more time than you might like

CASE STUDY

Industry Government

Source Info-Tech Client

"When our customers get a budget for a project, it’s all in capital. It never occurs to them that IT has a limited number of hours. "

Challenge

• A small municipal government was servicing a wide geographic area for information technology and infrastructure services.
• There was no meaningful division of IT resources between support and project work.
• Previous IT leadership tried a commercial PPM tool and stopped paying maintenance fees for it because of lack of adoption.
• Projects were tracked inconsistently in multiple places.

Solution

• New project requests were approved with IT involvement.
• Project approvals were entirely associated with the capital budget required and resourcing was never considered to be a constraint.
• The broad assumption was that IT time was generally available for project work.
• In reality, the IT personnel had almost no time for project work.

Results

• The organization introduced Info-Tech’s Grow Your Own PPM Solution template with minor modifications.
• They established delivery dates for projects based on available time.
• Time was allocated for projects based on person, project, percentage of time, and month.
• They prioritized project allocations above reactive support work.

Validate your resourcing assumptions with your staff by surveying their use of time

Embrace the reality of imperfect IT labor efficiency to improve your understanding of resource time spend.

Use Info-Tech’s time-tracking survey to validate your resourcing assumptions and get additional information to improve your understanding of resource time spent: imperfect labor efficiency and continuous partial attention.

Causes of imperfect IT labor inefficiency

• Most IT tasks are unique to their respective projects and contexts. A component that took 30 minutes to install last year might take two hours to install this year due to system changes that occurred since then.
• Many IT tasks come up unexpectedly due to the need to maintain and support systems implemented on past projects. This work is unpredictable in terms of specifics (what will break where, when, or how).
• Task switching slows people down and consumes time.
• Problem solving and solution design often requires unstructured time to think more openly. Some of the most valuable solutions are conceived or discovered when people aren’t regimented and focused on getting things done.

Info-Tech Insight

Part of the old resource management mythology is the idea that a person can do (for example) eight different one-hour tasks in eight hours of continuous work. This idea has gone from harmlessly mistaken to grossly unrealistic.

Constant interruptions lead to continuous partial attention that threatens real productivity

There’s a difference between being busy and getting things done.

“Working” on multiple tasks at once can often feel extremely gratifying in the short term because it distracts people from thinking about work that isn’t being done.

The bottom line is that continuous partial attention impedes the progress of project work.

Research on continuous partial attention

• A study that analyzed interruptions and their effects on individuals in the workplace found that that “41% of the time an interrupted task was not resumed right away” (Mark, 2015).
• Research has also shown that it can take people an average of 23 minutes to return to a task after being interrupted (Schulte, 2015).
• Delays following interruptions are typically due to switching between multiple other activities before returning to the original task. In many cases, those tasks are much lower priorities – and in some cases not even work-related.

Info-Tech Insight

It may not be possible to minimize interruptions in the workplace, as many of these are considered to be urgent at the time. However, setting guidelines for how and when individuals can be interrupted may help to limit the amount of lost project time.

"Like so many things, in small doses, continuous partial attention can be a very functional behavior. However, in large doses, it contributes to a stressful lifestyle, to operating in crisis management mode, and to a compromised ability to reflect, to make decisions, and to think creatively."

– Linda Stone, Continuous Partial Attention

Define the goals and the scope of the time-tracking survey

1.2.5
30 minutes

Input

Completed Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Output

Survey design for the time-tracking survey

Materials

N/A

Participants

• PMO Director
• Functional Managers
• Project Managers

Discuss the following with the activity participants:

1. Define the scope of the survey
   • Respondents: Comprehensive survey of individuals vs. a representative sample using roles.
   • Granularity: decide how in-depth the questions will be and how often the survey will be delivered.
   • Data Collection: what information do you want to collect?
     • Proportion of project vs. non-project work.
     • Time spent on administrative tasks.
     • Prevalence and impact of distractions.
     • Worker satisfaction.
2. Determine the sample time period covered by the survey
   • Info-Tech recommends 2-4 weeks. Less than 2 weeks might not be a representative sample, especially during vacation seasons.
   • More than 4 weeks will impose unreasonable time and effort for diminishing returns; data quality will begin to deteriorate as participation declines.
3. Determine the survey method
   • Use your organization’s preferred survey distributor/online survey tool, or conduct one-on-one interviews to capture data.

1.2.5 continued - Refine the questionnaire to improve the relevance and quality of insights produced by the survey

Start with Info-Tech’s recommended weekly survey questions:

1. Estimate your daily average for number of hours spent on:
   1. Total work
   2. Project work
   3. Non-project work
2. How many times are you interrupted with “urgent” requests requiring immediate response in a given day?
3. How many people or projects did you complete tasks for this week?
4. Rate your overall satisfaction with work this week.
5. Describe any special tasks, interruptions, or requests that took your time and attention away from project work this week.

Customize these questions to suit your needs.

Info-Tech Insight

Maximize the number of survey responses you get by limiting the number of questions you ask. Info-Tech finds that participation drops off rapidly after five questions.

1.2.5 continued - Communicate the survey goals and steps, and conduct the survey

1. Communicate the purpose and goals of the survey to maximize participation and satisfaction.
   • Provide background for why the survey is taking place. Clarify that the intention is to improve working conditions and management capabilities, not to play “gotcha” or hold workers accountable.
2. Provide a timeline so expectations are clear about when possible next steps will occur, such as
   • Sharing and analyzing results
   • Making decisions
   • Taking action
3. Reiterate what people are required or expected to do and how much effort is required. Provide reasonable and realistic estimates of how much time and effort people should spend on audit participation.
4. Distribute the survey; collect and analyze the data.

Info-Tech Insight

Make sure that employees understand the purpose of the survey. It is important that they give honest responses that reflect the struggles they are encountering with balancing project and non-project work, not simply telling management what they want to hear.

Ensuring that employees know this survey is being used to help them, rather than scolding them for not completing work, will give you useful, insightful data on employee time.

Use Info-Tech’s Time-Tracking Survey Email Template for facilitating your communications.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Provide guidance to your resources with examples on how to differentiate project work vs. non-project work, administrative vs. keep-the-lights-on work, what counts as interruptions, etc.

Optimize your project portfolio to maintain continuous visibility into capacity

Now that you have a realistic picture of your realized project capacity and demand amounts, it’s time to use these values to tailor and optimize your resource management practices.

Based on desired outcomes for this phase, we have

1. Determined the correct course of action to resolve your supply/demand imbalances.
2. Assessed the overall project capacity of your portfolio.
3. Cataloged sources of project and non-project demands.
4. Performed a time audit to create an accurate and realistic picture of the time spent on different types of work.

In the next phase, we will:

1. Wireframe a resource management process.
2. Choose a resource management tool.
3. Define data collection, analysis, and reporting steps within a sustainable resource management process.

Screenshots from tab 6 of the Time Audit Workbook.

Info-Tech Insight

The validity of traditional, rigorous resource planning has long been an illusion because the resource projections were typically not maintained. New realities such as faster project cycles, matrix organizations, and high-autonomy staff cultures have made the illusion impossible to maintain.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

1.1.2 Assess the current distribution of accountability for resource management practice

Discuss who is currently accountable for various facets of resource management, and whether they have the right authority and ability to deliver on that accountability.

1.2.1 Create realistic estimates of supply and demand using Info-Tech’s Supply-Demand Calculator

Derive actionable, quantitative insight into the resourcing challenges facing the organization by using Info-Tech’s methodology that prioritizes completeness over precision.

Phase 2

Design a Realistic Resource Management Process

Phase 2 Outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 2: Draft a Resource Management Process

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 3-6 weeks

Step 2.1: Determine the dimensions of resource management

Start with an analyst kick-off call:

• Introduce the seven dimensions of resource management
• Trade-off between granularity and utility of data

Then complete these activities…

• Decide on the seven dimensions
• Examine the strategy’s cost-of-use

With these tools & templates:

Resource Management Playbook

Step 2.2: Support your process with a resource management tool

Discuss with the analyst:

• Inventory of available PPM tools
• Overview of Portfolio Manager Lite 2017

Then complete these activities…

• Populate the tool with data
• Explore portfolio data with the workbook’s output tabs

With these tools & templates:

• Portfolio Manager Lite
• PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script

Step 2.3: Build process steps

Discuss with the analyst:

• Common challenges of resource management practice
• Recommendations for a pilot initiative

Then complete these activities…

• Review and customize contents of the Resource Management Playbook

With these tools & templates:

• Resource Management Playbook

Phase 2 Results & Insights:

Draft the resource management practice with sustainability in mind. It is about what you can and will maintain every week, even during a crisis: it is not about what you put together as a one-time snapshot. Once you stop maintaining resource data, it's nearly impossible to catch up.

Step 2.1: Customize the seven dimensions of resource management

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Establish a default project vs. non-project work ratio
• Decide the scope of allocation for your strategy
• Set your allocation cadence
• Limit the granularity of time allocation
• Define the granularity of work assignment
• Apply a forecast horizon
• Determine the update frequency

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO / IT Director
• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Functional / Resource Managers
• Project Managers

Outcomes of this step

• Seven dimensions of resource management, chosen to fit the current needs and culture of the organization
• Parameters for creating a resource management process (downstream)

There is no one-size-fits-all resource management strategy

Don’t get boxed into a canned solution that doesn’t make sense for your department’s maturity level and culture.

Resource management strategies are commonly implemented “out-of-the-box,” via a commercial PPM or time-tracking tool, or an external third-party consultant in partnership with those types of tools.

While these solutions and best practices have insights to offer – and provide admirable maturity targets – they often outstrip the near-term abilities of IT teams to successfully implement, adopt, and support them.

Tailor an approach that makes sense for your department and organization. You don’t need complex and granular processes to get usable resourcing data; you just need to make sure that you’ve carved out a process that works in terms of providing data you can use.

• In this step, we will walk you through Info-Tech’s seven dimensions of resource management to help wireframe your resource management process.
• In the subsequent steps in this phase, we will develop these dimensions from a wireframe into a functioning process.

Info-Tech Insight

Put processes before tools. Most commercial PPM tools include a resource management function that was designed for hourly granularity. This is part of the fallacy of an old reality that was never real. Determine which goals are realistic and fit your solution to your problem.

Wireframe a strategy that will work for your department using Info-Tech’s seven dimensions of resource management

Action the decision points across Info-Tech’s seven dimensions to ensure your resource management process is guided by realistic data and process goals.

In this step, we will walk you through the decision points in each dimension to determine the departmental specificities of your resource management strategy

Default project vs. non-project ratio

How much time is available for projects once non-project demands are factored in?

Reporting frequency

How often is the allocation data verified, reconciled, and reported for use?

Forecast horizon

How far into the future can you realistically predict resource supply?

Scope of allocation

To whom is time allocated?

Allocation cadence

How long is each allocation period?

Granularity of time allocation

What’s the smallest unit of time to allocate?

Granularity of work assignment

What is time allocated to?

Info-Tech Best Practice

Ensure that both the functional managers and the project managers participate in the following discussions. Without buy-in from both dimensions of the matrix organization, you will have difficulty making meaningful resource management data and process decisions.

Establish your default project versus non-project work ratio

2.1.1
30 minutes

Input

• Completed Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator

Output

• Default organizational P-NP ratio and role-specific P-NP ratios

Materials

• Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator
• Time Audit Workbook
• Resource Management Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

How much time is available for projects once non-project demands are factored in?

The default project vs. non-project work ratio (P-NP Ratio) is a starting point for functional and project managers to budget the work-hours at their disposal as well as for resources to split their time – if not directed otherwise by their managers.

How to set this dimension. The Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator from step 1.2 shows the current P-NP ratio for the department, and how the percentages translate into work-hours. The Time Audit Workbook from step 1.2 shows the ratio for specific roles.

For the work of setting this dimension, you can choose to keep the current ratio from step 1.2 as your default, or choose a new ratio based on the advice below.

• Discuss and decide how the supply-demand gap should be reconciled from the project side vs. the functional side.
  • Use the current organizational priority as a guide, and keep in mind that the default P-NP ratio is to be adjusted over time to respond to changing needs and priorities of the organization.
  • Once the organizational default P-NP ratio is chosen, defining role-specific ratios may be helpful. A help desk employee may spend only 10% of their time on project work, while an analyst may spend 80% of their time on project work.

Decide the scope of allocation for your strategy

2.1.2
15-30 minutes

Input

• Current practices for assigning work and allocating time
• Distribution of RM accountability (Activity 1.1.2)

Output

• Resource management scope of allocation

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

To whom is time allocated?

Scope of allocation is the “who” of the equation. At the lowest and most detailed level, allocations are made to individual resources. At the highest and most abstract level, though, allocations can be made to a department. Other “whos” in scope of allocation can include teams, roles, or skills.

How to set this dimension. Consider how much granularity is required for your overall project capacity visibility, and the process overhead you’re willing to commit to support this visibility. The more low-level and detailed the scope of allocation (e.g. skills or individuals) the more data maintenance required to keep it current.

• Discuss and decide to whom time will be allocated for the purposes of resource management.
  • Recall your prior discussion from activity 1.1.2 on how accountabilities for resource management are distributed within your organization.
  • The benefit of allocating teams to projects is that it is much easier to avoid overallocation. When a team is overallocated, it is visible. Individual overallocations can go unnoticed.
  • Once you have mastered the art of keeping resource data current and accurate at a higher level (e.g. team), it can be easier move lower level and assign and track allocations in a per-role or per-person basis.

Set your allocation cadence

2.1.3
15-30 minutes

Input

• Current practices for assigning work and allocating time
• Scope of allocation (Activity 2.1.2)

Output

• Determination of temporal frames over which time will be allotted

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

How long is each allocation period?

How long is each individual allocation period? In what “buckets of time” do you plan to spend time – week by week, month by month, or quarter by quarter? The typical allocation cadence is monthly; however, depending on the scope of allocation and the nature of work assigned, this cadence can differ.

How to set this dimension. Allocation cadence can depend on a number of factors. For instance, if you’re allocating time to agile teams, the cadence would most naturally be bi-weekly; if work is assigned via programs, you might allocate time by quarters.

• Discuss and decide the appropriate allocation cadence for the purposes of resource management. You could even be an environment that currently has different cadences for different teams. If so, it will be helpful to standardize a cadence for the purposes of centralized project portfolio resource management.
  • If the cadence is too short (e.g. days or weeks), it will require a dedicated effort to maintain the data.
  • If the cadence is too long (e.g. quarters or bi-annual), your resource management strategy could fail to produce actionable insight and lack the appropriate agility in being responsive to changes in direction.
  • Ultimately, your allocation cadence may be contingent upon the limitations of your resource management solution (see step 2.2).

Limit the granularity of time allocation

2.1.3
15-30 minutes

Input

• Requirements for granularity of data
• Resource management scope of allocation (Activity 2.1.2)

Output

• Determination of lowest level of granularity for time allocation

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

What’s the smallest unit of time that will be allocated?

Granularity of time allocation refers to the smallest unit of time that can be allocated. You may not need to set firm limits on this, given that it could differ from PM to PM, and resource manager to resource manager. Nevertheless, it can be helpful to articulate an “as-low-as-you’ll-go” limit to help avoid getting too granular too soon in your data aspirations.

How to set this dimension. At a high level, the granularity of allocation could be as high as a week. At its lowest level, it could be an hour. Other options include a full day (e.g. 8 hours), a half day (4 hours), or 2-hour increments.

• Discuss and decide the appropriate granularity for all allocations in the new resource management practice.
  • As a guideline, granularity of allocation should be one order of magnitude smaller than the allocation cadence to provide enough precision for meaningfully dividing up each allocation cadence, without imposing an unreasonably rigorous expectation for resources to manage their time.
  • The purpose of codifying this dimension is to help provide a guideline for how granular allocations should be. Hourly granularity can be difficult to maintain, so (for instance) by setting a half-day granularity you can help avoid project managers and resource managers getting too granular.

Define the granularity of work assignments

2.1.4
15-30 minutes

Input

• Requirements for granularity of work assignment
• Resource management scope of allocation (Activity 2.1.2)

Output

• Determination of work assignment

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

To what is time allocated?

Determine a realistic granularity for your allocation. This is the “what” of the equation: what your resources are working on or the size of work for which allocations are managed.

How to set this dimension. A high level granularity of work assignment would assign an entire program, a mid-level scope would involve allocating a project or a phase of a project, and a low level, rigorous scope would involve allocating an individual task.

• Discuss and decide the appropriate granularity for all work assignments in the new resource management strategy.
  • The higher granularity that is assigned, the more difficult it becomes to maintain the data. However, assigning at program level might not lead to useful, practical data.
  • Begin by allocating to projects to help you mature your organization, and once you have mastered data maintenance at this level, you can move on to a more granular work assignment.
    • If you are at a maturity level of 1 or 2, Info-Tech recommends beginning by assigning by project. If you are at a maturity level 3-4, it may be time to start allocating by phase or task.

Apply a forecast horizon

2.1.5
15-30 minutes

Input

• Current practices for work planning, capacity forecasting
• Allocation scope, cadence, and granularity (Activities 2.1.2-4)

Output

• Resource management forecast horizon

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

How far into the future can you realistically predict resource supply?

Determine a realistic forecasting horizon for your allocation. At this point you have decided “what” “who” is working on and how frequently this will be updated. Now it is time to decide how far resource needs will be forecasted, e.g. “what will this person be working on in 3 months?”

How to set this dimension. A high-level forecast horizon would only look forward week-to-week, with little consideration of the long-term future. A mid-level forecast would involve predicting one quarter in advance and a low-level, rigorous scope would involve forecasting one or more years in advance.

• Discuss and decide the appropriate forecast horizon that will apply to all allocations in the new resource management practice. It’s important that your forecast horizon helps to foster accurate data. If you can’t ensure data accuracy for a set period, make your forecast horizon shorter.
  • If you are at a maturity level of 1 or 2, Info-Tech recommends forecasting one month in advance.
  • If you are already at level 3-4 on the resource management maturity model, Info-Tech recommends forecasting one quarter to one year in advance.

See the diagram below for further explanation

2.1.5 Forecast horizon diagram

Between today and the forecast horizon (“forecast window”), all stakeholders in resource management commit to reasonable accuracy of data. The aim is to create a reliable data set that can be used to determine true resource capacity, as well as the available resource capacity to meet unplanned, urgent demands.

Info-Tech Insight

Ensure data accuracy. It is important to note that forecasting a year in advance does not necessarily make your organization more mature, unless you can actually rely on these estimates and use them. It is important to only forecast as far in advance as you can accurately predict.

Determine the update frequency

2.1.6
30 minutes

Input

• Current practices for work planning, capacity reporting
• Current practices for project intake, prioritization, and approval
• RM core dimensions (Activities 2.1.1)

Output

• Resource management update frequency

Materials

• RM Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

How often is the allocation data verified, reconciled, and reported for use?

How often will you reconcile and rebalance your allocations? Your update frequency will determine this. It is very much the heartbeat of resource management, dictating how often reports on allocations will be updated and published for stakeholders’ consumption.

How to set this dimension. Determine a realistic frequency with which to update project reports. This will be how you determine who is working on what during each measurement period.

• Discuss and decide how often the supply-demand gap should be reconciled from the project side vs. the functional side.
  • Keep in mind that the more frequent the reporting period, the more time must go into data maintenance. A monthly frequency requires maintenance at the end of the month, while weekly requires it at the end of each week.
  • Also think about how accurately you can maintain the data. Having a quarterly update frequency may require less maintenance time than monthly, but this information may not stay up to date in between these long stretches.
  • Reports generated at each update frequency should both inform resources on what to work on, what not to work on, and how to prioritize tasks if something unexpected comes up, as well as the steering committee, to help inform project approval decisions.

Finalize the dimensions for your provisional resource management process

2.1.7
10 minutes

Input

• 7 core dimensions of resource management (Activities 2.1.1-6)

Output

• Provisional resource management strategy

Materials

• Resource Management Playbook

Participants

• CIO
• PMO Director
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

Document the outputs from the preceding seven activities. These determinations will form the foundation of your resource management strategy, which we will go on to define in more detail in the subsequent steps of this phase.

• Keep in mind, at this stage your dimensions are provisional and subject to change, pending the outcomes of steps 2.2 and 2.3.

Document these dimensions in Section 1.1 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook. We will be further customizing this template in steps 2.3 and 3.1.

Step 2.2: Determine the resource management tool that will best support your process

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Consider the pros and cons of commercial tools vs. spreadsheets as a resource management tool
• Review the PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script to ensure your investment in a commercial tool meets your resource management needs
• Jump-start spreadsheet-based resource management with Portfolio Manager Lite

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Functional / Resource Managers
• Project Managers

Outcomes of this step

• Choice of tool to support the resource management process
• Examination of the commercial tool’s ability to support the resource management process chosen
• Set-up and initial use of Portfolio Manager Lite for a spreadsheet-based resource management solution

Effective resource management practices require an effective resource management tool

The discipline of resource management has largely become inextricable from the tools that help support it. Ensure that you choose the right tool for your environment.

Resource management depends on the flow of information and data from the project level up to functional managers, project managers, and beyond.

Tools are required to help facilitate this flow, and the project portfolio management landscape is littered with endless time-tracking and capacity management options.

These options can each have their merits and their drawbacks. The success of implementing a resource management strategy very much hinges upon weighing these, and then choosing the right solution for your project eco-system.

• This first part of this step will help you assess the tool landscape and make the right choice to help support your resource management practices.
• In the second part of this step, we’ll take a deep-dive into Info-Tech’s Excel-based resource management solution. If you are implementing our solution, these sections will help you understand and set up the tool.

Info-Tech Insight

Establish a book of record. While it is possible to succeed using ad hoc tools and data sources, a centralized repository for capacity data works best. Your tool choice should help establish a capacity book of record to help ensure ongoing reconciliation of supply and demand at the portfolio level.

Get to know your resource management tool options

At a high level, those looking for a resource management solution have two broad options: a commercial project portfolio management (PPM) or time-tracking software on the one hand, and a spreadsheet-based tool, like Google Sheets or Excel, on the other.

Obviously, if your team or department already has access to a PPM or time-tracking software, it makes sense to continue using this, as long as it will accommodate the process that was wireframed in the previous step.

Otherwise, pursue the tool option that makes the most sense given both the strategy that you’ve wireframed and other organizational factors. See the table below and the next section for guidance.

“If you’re planning on doing resource allocation by hand, you’re not going to get very far.”

– Rachel Burger

Option A: When pursuing commercial options, don’t bite off more functionality than your people can sustain

While commercial options offer the most robust functionality for automation, collaboration, and reporting, they are also costly, difficult to implement, and onerous to sustain over the long run.

It’s not uncommon for organizations to sink vast amounts of money into commercial PPM tools, year after year, and never actually get any usable resource or forecasting data from these tools.

The reasons for this can vary, but in many cases it is because organizations mistake a tool for a PPM or a resource management strategy.

A tool is no substitute for having a clearly defined process that staff can support. Be aware of these two factors before investing in a commercial tool:

• Visibility cannot be automated. It is not uncommon for CIOs to believe that because they’ve invested in a tool, they have an automated portfolio that enables them to sit back and wait for the data to roll in. With many tools, the challenge is that the calculations driving the rollups have become increasingly unsustainable and irrelevant in our high-autonomy staff cultures and interruption-driven work days.
• Information does not equal knowledge. While commercial tools have robust reporting features, the data outputs can lead to information overload – and, subsequently, disinterest – unless they are curated and filtered to suit your executive’s needs and expectations.

47%
Of those companies using automated software to assist in resource management, almost half report that those systems failed to accurately calculate resource forecasts.

– PM Solutions

Info-Tech Insight

Put process sustainability before enhanced tool functionality.

Ensure that you have sustainable processes in place before investing in an expensive commercial tool. Your tool selection should help facilitate capability-matched processes and serve user adoption.

Trying to establish processes around a tool with a functionality that exceeds your process maturity is a recipe for failure.

Before jumping into a commercial tool, consider some basic parameters for your selection

Use the table below as a starting point to help ensure you are pursuing a resource management tool that is right for your organization’s size and process maturity level.

For a more in-depth treatment of choosing and implementing a commercial PPM tool to assist with your resource management practice, see Info-Tech’s blueprint, Select and Implement a PPM Solution.

Use Info-Tech’s PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script to help ensure you get the functionality you need

PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script (optional)

To ensure your investment in a commercial tool meets your resource management needs, use Info-Tech’s PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script to structure your tool demos and interactions with vendors.

For instance, some important scenarios to consider when looking at potential tools include:

• How are overallocation and underallocation situations identified and reconciled in the solution?
• How are users motivated to maintain their own timesheets (beyond simply being mandated as part of their job); how does the solution and timesheet functionality help team members do their job?
• How will portfolio-level reports remain useful and accurate despite “zero-adoption” scenarios, in which some or all teams do not actively maintain task and timesheet data?

Any deficiencies in answering these types of questions should alert you to the fact that a potential solution may not adequately meet the needs of your resource management strategy.

Download Info-Tech’s PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script

"[H]ow (are PPM solutions) performing in a matrix organization? Well, there are gaps. There will be employees who do not submit timesheets, who share their time between project and operational activities, and whose reporting relationships do not fit neatly into the PPM database structure. This creates exceptions in the PPM application, and you may just have the perfect solution to a small subset of your problems." – Vilmos Rajda

Option B: When managing resourcing via spreadsheets, you don’t have to feel like you’re settling for the lesser option

Spreadsheets can provide a viable alternative for organizations not ready to invest in an expensive tool or for those not getting what they need from their commercial selections.

When it comes to resource management at a portfolio level, spreadsheets can be just as effective as commercial tools for facilitating the flow of accurate and maintainable resourcing data and for communicating resource usage and availability.

Some of the benefits of spreadsheets over commercials tools include:

• They are easy to set up and deploy. High process maturity or organization-wide user adoption are not required.
• They have a low cost-in-use. In the case of Excel, the tool itself comes at no additional cost.
• They are highly customizable. No development time/costs are required to tweak the solution to suit your needs.

To be clear: spreadsheets have their drawbacks (for instance, they are easy to break, require a centralized data administrator, and are yours and yours alone to maintain). If your department has the budget and the process maturity to support a commercial tool, you should pursue the options covered in the previous sections.

However, if you are looking for a viable alternative to an expensive tool, spreadsheets have the ability to support a rigorous resource management practice.

"Because we already have enterprise licensing for an expensive commercial tool, everyone else thinks it’s logical to start there. I think we’re going to start with something quick and dirty like Excel." – EPMO Director, Law Enforcement Services

Info-Tech Insight

Make the choice to ensure adoption.

When making your selection, the most important consideration across all the solution categories is data maintenance. You must be assured that you and your team can maintain the data.

As soon as your portfolio data becomes inconsistent and unreliable, decision makers will lose trust in your resource data, and the authority of your resource management strategy will become very tenuous.

While spreadsheets offer a viable resource management option, not all spreadsheets are created equal

Lean on Info-Tech’s experience and expertise to get up and running quickly with a superior resource management Excel-based tool: Portfolio Manager Lite 2017.

Spreadsheets are the most common PPM tool – and it’s not hard to understand why: they can be created with minimal cost and effort.

But when something is easy to do, it’s important to keep in mind that it’s also easy to do badly. As James Kwak says in his article, “The Importance of Excel,” “The biggest problem is that anyone can create Excel Spreadsheets—badly.”

• Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite 2017 offers an antidote to the deficiencies that can haunt home-grown resource management tools.
• As an easy-to-deploy, highly evolved spreadsheet-based option, Portfolio Manager Lite enables you to mature your resource management processes, and provide effective resource visibility without the costly upfront investment.

Download Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite 2017

Info-Tech Insight

Balance functionality and adoption. Clients often find it difficult to gain adoption with commercial tools. Though homegrown solutions may have less functionality, the higher adoption level can make up for this and also potentially save your organization thousands a year in licensing fees.

Determine your resource management solution and revisit your seven dimensions of resource management

2.2.1
Times will vary

Participants

• PMO Director

Based on input from the previous slides, determine the resource management solution option you will pursue and implement to help support your resource management strategy. Record this selection in section 1.2 of the Resource Management Playbook.

• You may need to revisit the decisions made in step 2.1 to consider if the default values for your seven core dimensions of resource management are still sound. Keep these current and relevant as you become more familiar with your resource management solution.

Portfolio Manager Lite has comprehensive sample data to help you understand its functions.

As you can see in this table, the tool itself assumes five of the seven resource management core dimensions. You will need to determine departmental values for granularity of allocation and reporting frequency. The other dimensions are determined by the tool.

If you’re piloting Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite, review the subsequent slides in this step before proceeding to step 2.3. If you are not piloting Portfolio Manager Lite, proceed directly to step 2.3.

Overview of Portfolio Manager Lite

Portfolio Manager Lite has two set-up tabs, three data entry tabs, and six output-only tabs. The next 15 slides show how to use them. To use this tool, you need Excel 2013 or 2016. If you’re using Excel 2013, you must download and install Microsoft Power Query version 2.64 or later, available for download from Microsoft.

Observe “table manners” to maintain table integrity and prevent Portfolio Manager Lite malfunctions

Excel tables enable you to manage and analyze a group of related data. Since Portfolio Manager Lite uses tables extensively, maintaining the table’s integrity is critical. Here are some things to know for working with Excel tables.

Do not leave empty rows at the end.

Adjust the sizing handle to eliminate empty rows.

Always paste values.

Default pasting behavior can interrupt formula references and introduce unwanted external links. Always right-click and select Paste Values.

Correctly add/remove rows within a table.

Do not use row headings; instead, always right-click inside a table to manipulate table rows.

Set up Portfolio Manager Lite

2.2.1
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 2a: Org Setup

The Org Setup tab is divided into two sections, Resources and Projects. Each section contains several categories to group your resources and projects. Items listed under each category will be available via drop-down lists in the data tabs.

These categorizations will be used later to “slice” your resource allocation data. For example, you’ll be able to visualize the resource allocations for each team, for each division, or for each role.

1. Role and Default Non-Project Ratio columns: From the Supply-Demand Calculator, copy the list of roles, and how much of each role’s time is spent on non-projects by default (see below; add the values marked with yellow arrows).

2. Resource Type column: List the type of resource you have available.

3. Team and Skill columns: List the teams, and skills for your resources.

In the Resources tab, items in drop-down lists will appear in the same order as shown here. Sort them to make things easy to find.

Do not delete tables you won’t use. Instead, leave or hide tables.

Set up Portfolio Manager Lite (continued)

2.2.1
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 2a: Org Setup

The projects section of the Org Setup tab contains several categories for entering project data. Items listed under each category will be available via drop-down lists in the Projects tab. These categorizations will be used later to analyze how your resources are allocated.

1. Project Type: Enter the names of project types, in which projects will be grouped. All projects must belong to a type. Examples of types may include sub-portfolios or programs.

2. Project Category: Enter the names of project categories, in which projects will be grouped. Unlike types, category is an optional grouping.

3. Phase: Enter the project phases. Ensure that your phases list has “In Progress” and “Complete” options. They are needed for the portfolio-wide Gantt chart (the Gantt tab).

4. Priority and Status: Define the choices for project priorities and statuses if necessary (optional).

5. Unused: An extra column with predefined choices is left for customization (optional).

Set up Portfolio Manager Lite (continued)

2.2.1
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 2b: Calendar Setup

Portfolio Manager Lite is set up for a monthly allocation cadence out of the box. Use this tab to set up the start date, the default resource potential capacity, and the months to include in your reports.

1. Enter a start date for the calendar, e.g. start of your fiscal or calendar year.

2. Enter how many hours are assumed in a working day. It is used to calculate the default maximum available hours in a month.

Maximum Available Hours, Weekdays, and Business Days are automatically generated.

The current month is highlighted in green.

3. Enter the number of holidays to correct the number of business days for each month.

Year to Date Reporting and Forecast Reporting ranges are controlled by this table. Use the period above Maximum Available Hours.

Info-Tech Best Practice

Both Portfolio Manager Lite and Portfolio Manager 2017 can be customized for non-monthly resource allocation. Speak to an Info-Tech analyst to ask for more information.

Enter resource information and their total capacity

2.2.2
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 3: Resources

Portfolio Manager Lite is set up for allocating time to individual resources out of the box. Information on these resources is entered in the Resources tab. It has four sections, arranged horizontally.

1. Enter basic information on your resources. Resource type, team, role, and skill will be used to help you analyze your resource data.

Ensure that the resource names are unique.

Sort or filter the table using the filter button in the header row.

2. Their total capacity in work-hours is automatically calculated for each month, using the default numbers from the Calendar Setup tab. If necessary, overwrite the formula and enter in custom values.

Cells with less than 120 hours are highlighted in blue.

Do not add or delete any columns, or modify this header row.

Enter out-of-office time and non-project time for your resources

2.2.2
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 3: Resources

3. Enter the resources’ out-of-office time for each month, as they are reported.

Do not add or delete any columns, or modify the header row, below the dates.

4. Resources’ percentages of time spent on non-projects are automatically calculated, based on their roles’ default P-NP ratios. If necessary, overwrite the formula and enter in custom values.

Do not add or delete any columns, or modify the header row, below the dates.

Populate your project records

2.2.3
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 4: Projects

Portfolio Manager Lite is set up for allocating time to projects out of the box. Information on these projects is entered in the Projects tab.

1. Enter project names and some basic information. These fields are mandatory.

Ensure that the project names are unique.

Do not modify or change the headers of the first seven columns. Do not add to or delete these columns.

2. Continue entering more information about projects. These fields are optional and can be customized.

Headers of these columns can be changed. Extra columns can be added to the right of the Status column if desired. However, Info-Tech strongly recommends that you speak to an Info-Tech analyst before customizing.

The Project Category, Phase, and Priority fields are entered using drop-down lists from the Org Setup tab.

Allocate your resource project capacity to projects

2.2.4
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 5: Allocations

Project capacity for each resource is calculated as follows, using the data from the Resources tab:

Project capacity = (total project capacity – absence) x (100% – non-project%)

In the Allocations tab, project capacity is allocated in percentages with 100% representing the allocation of all available project time of a resource to a project.

This allocation-by-percentage model has some advantages and drawbacks:

Advantages

• Allocating all available project capacity to project is straightforward
• Easy for project managers to coordinate with each other (e.g. “Jon’s project time will be split 50%-50% between two projects” = enter 50% allocation to each project)

Drawbacks

• How many hours is represented by a percentage of someone’s capacity is unclear
• Must check whether enough work-hours are allocated for what’s needed (e.g. “Deliverable A needs 20 hours of work from Jon in November. Is 50% of his project capacity enough?”)

The Allocations tab has a few features to help you mitigate these disadvantages.

Info-Tech Best Practice

For organizations with lower resource management practice maturity, start with percentages. In Portfolio Manager 2017, allocations are entered in work-hours to avoid the above drawbacks altogether, but this may require a higher practice maturity.

Enter your resource project capacity allocations

2.2.4
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 5: Allocations

A line item in the Allocations tab requires three pieces of information: a project, a resource, and the percentage of project capacity for each month.

1. Choose a project. Type, Start date, and End date are automatically displayed.

2. Choose a resource. Team is automatically displayed.

3. Enter the resource’s allocated hours for the project in percentages.

Built-in functions in the Allocations tab display helpful information for balancing project supply and demand

2.2.4
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 5: Allocations

The Allocations tab helps you preview the available project capacity of a resource, as well as the work-hours represented by each allocation line item, to mitigate the drawbacks of percentage allocations.

In addition, overallocations (allocations for a given month add up to over 100%) are highlighted in red. These functions help resource managers balance the project supply and demand.

To preview a resource’s project capacity in work-hours, choose a resource using a drop down. The resource’s available project capacity for each month is displayed to the right.

Sort or filter the table using the filter button in the header row. Here, the Time table is sorted by Resource.

The total work-hours for each line item is shown in the Hours column. Here, 25% of Bethel’s project capacity for 4 months adds up to only 16 work-hours for this project.

A resource is overallocated when project capacity allocations add up to more than 100% for a given month. Overallocations are highlighted in red.

Get the timeline of your project portfolio with the Gantt chart tab

2.2.5
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 6: Gantt

The Gantt tab is a pivot-table-driven chart that graphically represents the start and end dates of projects and their project statuses.

Filter entries by project type above the chart.

The current month (9-17) is highlighted.

You can filter and sort entries by project name, sponsor, or project manager.

In progress (under Phase column) projects show the color of their overall status.

Projects that are neither completed nor in progress are shown in grey.

Completed (under Phase column) projects are displayed as black.

Get a bird’s-eye view of your available project capacity with the Resource Load tab

2.2.6
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 7: Resource Load

The Resource Load tab is a PivotTable showing the available project capacity for each resource.

Change the thresholds for indicating project overallocation at the top right.

You can filter and sort entries by resource or role.

Values in yellow and red highlight overallocation.

Values in green indicate resource availability.

This table provides a bird’s-eye view of all available project capacity. Highlights for overallocated resources yield a simple heat map that indicates resourcing conflicts that need attention.

The next two tabs contain graphical dashboards of available capacity.

Tip: Add more resource information by dragging a column name into the Rows box in the PivotTable field view pane.

Example: add the Team column by dragging it into the Rows box

Analyze your resource allocation landscape with the Capacity Slicer tab

2.2.7
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 8: Capacity Slicer

The Capacity Slicer tab is a set of pivot charts showing the distribution of resource allocation and how they compare against the potential capacity.

At the top left of each chart, you can turn Forecast Reporting on (true) or off (false). For Year to Date reporting, replace Forecast with YTD in the Field View pane’s Filter field.

In the Allocated Capacity, in % chart, capacity is shown as a % of total available capacity. Exceeding 100% indicates overallocation.

In the Realized Project Capacity, in hours chart, the vertical axis is in work-hours. This gap between allocation and capacity represents available project capacity.

The bottom plots show how allocated project capacity is distributed. If the boxes are empty, no allocation data is available.

Use the Team slicer to drill down on resource capacity and allocation by groups of resources

2.2.7
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 8: Capacity Slicer

A slicer filters the data shown in a PivotTable, a PivotChart, or other slicers. In this tab, the team slicer enables you to view resource capacity and allocation by each team or for multiple teams.

The button next to the Team header enables multiple selection.

The next button to the right clears the filter set by this slicer.

All teams with capacity or allocation data are listed in the slicers.

For example, if you select "App Dev":

The vertical axis scales automatically for filtered data.

The capacity and allocation data for all application division teams is shown.

Resources not in the App Dev team are filtered out.

Drill down on individual-level resource allocation and demand with the Capacity Locator tab

2.2.8
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 9: Capacity Locator

The Capacity Locator tab is a group of PivotCharts with multiple slicers to view available project capacity.

For example: click on “Developer” under Role:

Primary skills of all developers are displayed on the left in the Primary Skill column. You can choose a skill to narrow down the list of resources from all developers to all developers with that skill.

The selected resources are shown in the Resources column. Data on the right pertains to these resources.

• The top left graph shows the average available project capacity for all selected resources.
• The top right graph shows the sum of all available capacity from all selected resources.
• In the lower left graph, pay attention to available total capacity, as selected resources may have significant non-project demands.
• The lower right graph shows the number of assigned projects. Control the number of concurrent projects to reduce the need for multitasking and optimize your resource use.

Where you see the filter button with an x, you can clear the filter imposed by this slicer.

Check how your projects are resourced with the Project Viewer tab

2.2.9
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 10: Project Viewer

The Project Viewer tab is a set of PivotCharts with multiple slicers to view how resources are allocated to different projects.

Filtering by sponsor or project manager is useful for examining a group of projects by accountability (sponsor) or responsibility (project manager).

The graphs show how project budgets are distributed across different categories and priorities of projects, and how resource allocations are distributed across different categories and priorities of projects.

Report on your project portfolio status with the Project Updates tab

2.2.10
Portfolio Manager Lite, Tab 11: Project Updates

The Project Updates tab is a PivotTable showing various fields from the Projects table to rapidly generate a portfolio-wide status report. You can add or remove fields from the Projects table using the PivotTable’s Field View pane.

Filter entries by phase. The screenshot shows an expansion of this drop down at the top left.

Rearrange the columns by first clicking just below the header to select all cells in the column, and then dragging it to the desired position. Alternatively, arrange them in the Field View pane.

Tools and other requirements needed to complete the resource management strategy

2.2.11
10 minutes

• Recommended: If you are below a level 4 on Info-Tech’s resource management maturity scale, use Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager Lite to start.
• Use a commercial PPM tool if you already have one in use and feel that you can accurately maintain the data in this tool.
• Use this chart to estimate the amount of time it will take to accurately maintain the data for each reporting period.
  • Determine who will be responsible for this maintenance.
  • If there is no one currently available to maintain the data, allocate time for someone or you may even need a portfolio analyst.
  • We will confirm roles and responsibilities in phase 3.

See also: Grow Your Own PPM Solution with Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager 2017

Join hundreds of Info-Tech clients who are successfully growing their own PPM solution.

If you are looking for a more robust resource management solution, or prefer to allocate staff time in hours rather than percentages, see Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager 2017.

Similar to Portfolio Manager Lite, Portfolio Manager 2017 is a Microsoft Excel-based PPM solution that provides project visibility, forecasting, historical insight, and portfolio analytics capabilities for your PMO without a large upfront investment for a commercial solution.

Watch Info-Tech’s Portfolio Manager 2017 Video – Introduction and Demonstration.

System Requirements

To use all functions of Portfolio Manager 2017, you need Excel 2013 or Excel 2016 running on Windows, with the following add-ins:

• Power Query (Excel 2013 only)
• Power Pivot
• Power View

Power View is only available on select editions of Excel 2013 and 2016, but you can still use Portfolio Manager 2017 without Power View.

If you are unsure, speak to your IT help desk or an Info-Tech analyst for help.

For a new PMO, start with the new reality

CASE STUDY

Industry Law Enforcement

Source Info-Tech Client

“Because we already have enterprise licensing for an expensive commercial tool, everyone else thinks it’s logical to start there. I think we’re going to start with something quick and dirty like Excel.” – EPMO Director, Law Enforcement Services

Situation

• This was an enterprise PMO, but with relatively low organizational maturity.
• The IT department had relatively high project management maturity, but the enterprise was under-evolved at the portfolio level.
• Other areas of the organization already had licensing and deployment of a top-tier commercial PPM tool.
• There were no examples of a resource management practice.

Complication

• There was executive visibility on larger and more strategic projects.
• There were no constraints on the use of resources for smaller projects.
• The PMO was generally expected to provide project governance with their limited resources.
• The organization lacked an understanding of the difference between project and portfolio management. Consequently, it was difficult to create resource management practices at the portfolio level due to a lack of resourcing.

Resolution

• The organization deferred the implementation of the commercial PPM tool.
• They added high-level resource management using spreadsheets.
• Executive focus was reoriented around overall resource capacity as the principle constraint for project approvals.
• They introduced deeper levels of planning granularity over time.
• When the planning granularity gets down to the task level, they move toward the commercial solution.

Step 2.3: Build process steps to ensure data accuracy and sustainability

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Draft a high-level resource management workflow
• Build on the workflow to determine how data will be collected at each step, and who will support the process
• Document your provisional resource management process

This step involves the following participants:

• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Functional / Resource Managers
• Project Managers

Outcomes of this step

• A high-level resource management workflow, customized from Info-Tech’s sample workflow
• Process for collecting resource supply data for each reporting period
• Process for capturing the project demand within each reporting period
• Process for identifying and documenting resource constraints and issues for each reporting period
• Standard protocol for resolving resource issues within each reporting period
• Process for finalizing and communicating resource allocations for the forecast window
• A customized Resource Management Playbook, documenting the standard operating procedure for the processes

Make sustainability the goal of your resource management practices

A resource management process is doing more harm than good if it doesn’t facilitate the flow of accurate and usable data week after week, month after month, year after year.

When resource management strategies fail, it can typically be tied back to the same culprit: unrealistic expectations from the outset.

If a resource management process strives for a level of data precision that staff cannot juggle day to day, over the long run, then things will eventually fall apart as staff and decision makers alike lose faith in the data and the relevancy of the process.

Two things can be done to help avoid this fate:

1. Strive for accuracy over precision. If your department’s process maturity is low, and staff are ping-ponged from task to task, fire to fire, throughout any given day, then striving for precise data is ill advised. Keep your granularity of allocation more high level, and strive for data that is “maintainably” accurate rather than “unmaintainably” precise.
2. Keep the process simple. Use the advice in this step to develop a sustainable process, one that is easy to follow with clearly defined responsibilities and accountabilities at each step.

Info-Tech Insight

It's not about what you put together as a one-time snapshot. It's about what you can and will maintain every week, even during a crisis. When you stop maintaining resource management data, it’s nearly impossible to catch up and you’re usually forced to start fresh.

Maintain reliable resourcing data with an easy-to-follow, repeatable process

Info-Tech recommends following a simple five-step process for resource management.

1. Collect resource supply data

• Resources
• Resource Managers

2. Collect project demand data

• Resource Managers
• Project Managers
• PMO

3. Identify sources of supply/demand imbalance

• PMO

4. Resolve conflicts and balance project and non-project allocations

• Resource Managers
• Project Managers
• PMO
• Steering Committee, CIO, other executives

5. Approve allocations for forecast window

• PMO
• Steering Committee, CIO, other executives

This is a sample workflow with sample roles and responsibilities. This step will help you customize the appropriate steps for your department.

Info-Tech Insight

This process aims to control the resource supply to meet the demand – project and non-project alike. Coordinate this process with other portfolio management processes, ensuring that up-to-date resource data is available for project approval, portfolio reporting, closure, etc.

Draft your own high-level resource management workflow

2.3.1
60 to 90 minutes

Participants

• Portfolio Manager
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers
• Business Analysts

Input

• Process data requirements

Output

• High-level description of your target-state process

Materials

• Whiteboard or recipe cards

Conduct a table-top planning exercise to map out, at a high-level, your required and desired process steps.

While Info-Tech recommends a simple five-step process (see previous slide), you may need to flesh out your process into additional steps, depending upon the granularity of your seven dimensions and the complexity of your resource management tool. A table-top planning exercise can be helpful to ensure the right process steps are covered.

1. On a whiteboard or using white 4x6 recipe cards, write the unique steps of a resource management process. Use the process example at the bottom of this slide as a guide.
2. Use a green marker or green cards to write artifacts or deliverables that result from each step.
3. Use a red marker or red cards to address potential issues, problems, or risks that you can foresee at each step.

For the purposes of this activity, avoid getting into too much detail by keeping to your focus on the high-level data points that will be required to keep supply and demand balanced on an ongoing basis.

"[I]t’s important not to get too granular with your time tracking. While it might be great to get lots of insight into how your team is performing, being too detailed can eat into your team’s productive work time. A good rule of thumb to work by is if your employees’ timesheets include time spent time tracking, then you’ve gone too granular."

– Nicolas Jacobeus

Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook to help evolve your high-level steps into a repeatable practice

Once you’ve determined a high-level workflow, you’ll need to flesh out the organizational details for how data will be collected at each step and who will support the process.

Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook to help determine and communicate the “who, what, when, where, why, and how” of each of your high-level process steps.

The playbook template is intended to function as your resource management standard operating procedure. Customize Section 3 of the template to record the specific organizational details of how data will be collected at each process step, and the actions and decisions the data collection process will necessitate.

• Activities 2.3.2-2.3.6 in this step will help you customize the process steps in Info-Tech’s five-step resource management model and record these in the template. If you developed a customized process in activity 2.3.1, you will need to add to/take away from the activity slides and customize the template accordingly.
• Lean on the seven dimensions of resource management that you developed in step 2.1 to determine the cadence and frequency of data collection. For instance, if your update frequency is monthly, you will need to ensure you collect your supply-demand data prior to that, giving yourself enough time to analyze it and reconcile imbalances with stakeholders before refreshing your monthly reporting data.

Download Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook

How the next five activities will help you develop your playbook

2.3 Resource Management Playbook

Each of the slides for activities 2.3.2-2.3.6 are comprised of a task-at-a glance box as well as “important decisions to document” for each step.

Work as a group to complete the task-at-a-glance boxes for each step. Use the “important decisions to document” notes to help brainstorm the “how” for each step. These details should be recorded below the task-at-a-glance boxes in the playbook – see point 6 in the legend below.

Screenshot of Section 3 of the RM Playbook.

Screenshot Legend:

1. Review your existing steps, tools, and templates used for this task. Alternatively, review the example provided in the RM Playbook.
2. Designate the responsible party/parties for this process. Who carries out the task?
3. Document the inputs and outputs for the task: artifacts, consulted and informed parties.
4. If applicable, document the tools and templates used for the task.
5. Designate the accountable party for this task. Only a single party can be accountable.
6. Describe the “how” of the task below the Task-at-a-Glance table.

Step one: determine the logistics for collecting resource supply data for each reporting period

2.3.2
20 minutes

Step one in your resource management process should be ensuring a perpetually current view into your resource supply.

Resource supply in this context should be understood as the time, per your scope of allocation (i.e. individual, team, skill, etc.) that is leftover or available once non-project demands have been taken out of the equation. In short, the goal of this process step is to determine the non-project demands for the forecast period.

The important decisions to document for this step include:

1. What data will be collected and from whom? For example, functional managers to update resource potential capacity and non-project resource allocations.
2. How often will data be collected and when? For example, data will be collected third Monday of the month, three days before our monthly update frequency.
3. How will the data be collected? For example, tool admin to send out data to update on third Monday; resource managers update the data and email back to tool admin.

Document your process for determining resource supply in Section 3.1 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Task-at-a-glance:

Step two: map out how project demand will be captured within each reporting period

2.3.3
20 minutes

Step two in your resource management process will be to determine the full extent of project demand for your forecast period.

Project demand in this context can entail both in-flight projects as well as new project plans or new project requests that are proposing to consume capacity during the forecast period. In short, the goal of this process step is to determine all of the project demands for the forecast period.

The important decisions to document for this step include:

1. What data will be collected and from whom? For example, project managers to update project allocations for in-flight projects, and PMO will provide proposed allocations for new project requests.
2. How often will data be collected and when? For example, data will be collected third Tuesday of the month, two days before our monthly update frequency.
3. How will the data be collected? For example, tool admin to send out data to update on third Tuesday; project managers update the data and email back to tool admin.

Document your process for determining project demand in Section 3.2 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Task-at-a-glance

Step three: record how resource constraints and issues for each reporting period will be identified and documented

2.3.4
20 minutes

Step three in your resource management process will be to analyze your resource supply and project demand data to identify points of conflict.

Once the supply-demand data has been compiled, it will need to be analyzed for points of imbalance and conflict. The goal of this process step is to analyze the raw data and to make it consumable by other stakeholders in preparation for a reconciliation or rebalancing process.

The important decisions to document for this step include:

1. How will the data be checked for inaccuracies? For example, tool admin to enter and QA data; reach out by the following Wednesday at noon with inconsistencies; managers to respond no later than next day by noon.
2. What reports will employed? For example, a refreshed demand spreadsheet will be made available.
3. What is an acceptable range for over- and under-allocations? For example, the acceptable tolerance for allocation is 15%; that is, report only those resources that are less than 85% allocated, or more than 115% allocated.

Document your process for identifying resource constraints and issues in Section 3.3 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Task-at-a-glance

Step four: establish a standard protocol for resolving resource issues within each reporting period

2.3.5
20 minutes

Step four in your resource management process should be to finalize your capacity management book of record for the reporting period and prepare recommendations for resolving conflicts and issues.

The reconciliation process will likely take place at a meeting amongst the management of the PMO and representatives from the various functional groups within the department. The goal of this step is to get the right roles and individuals to agree upon proposed reconciliations and to sign-off on resource allocations.

The important decisions to document for this step include:

1. What reports will be distributed and in what form? For example, refreshed spreadsheet will be available on the PMO SharePoint site.
2. When will the reports be generated and for whom? For example, fourth Tuesday of the month, end of day – accessible for all managers.
3. Who has input into how conflicts should be resolved? For example, conflicts will be resolved at monthly resource management meeting. All meeting participants have input, but the PMO director will have ultimate decision-making authority.

Document your process for resolving resource constraints and issues in Section 3.4 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Step five: record how resource allocations will be finalized and communicated for the forecast window

2.3.6
20 minutes

The final step in your resource management process is to clarify how resource allocations will be documented in your resource management solution and reported to the department.

Once a plan to rebalance supply and demand for the reporting period has been agreed on, you will need to ensure that the appropriate data is updated in your resource management book of record, and that allocation decisions are communicated to the appropriate stakeholders.

The important decisions to document for this step include:

1. Who has ultimate authority for allocation decisions? For example, the CIO has final authority when conflicts need to be escalated and must approve all allocations for the forecast period.
2. Who will update the book of record and when? For example, the tool admin will update the data before the end of the day following the resource management meeting.
3. Who needs to be informed and of what? For example, resource plans will be updated in SharePoint for resources and managers to review.

Document your process for approving and finalizing allocation in Section 3.5 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Task-at-a-glance

Finalize your provisional resource management process in the Playbook Template

2.3 Resource Management Playbook

Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook to solidify your processes in a formalized operating plan.

Throughout this phase, we have been customizing sections 1, 2, and 3 of the Resource Management Playbook.

Before we move to pilot and implement your resource management strategy in the next phase of this blueprint, ensure that sections 1-3 of your playbook have been drafted and are ready to be communicated and shared with stakeholders.

• Avoid getting too granular in your process requirements. Keep it to high-level data requirements. Imposing too much detail in your playbook is a recipe for failure.
• The playbook should remain provisional throughout your pilot phase. Aspects of your process will likely need to be changed or tweaked as they are met with some day-to-day realities. As with any “living document,” it can be helpful to explicitly assign responsibilities for updating the playbook over the long term to ensure it stays relevant.

"People are spending far more time creating these elaborate [time-tracking] systems than it would have taken just to do the task. You’re constantly on your app refiguring, recalculating, re-categorizing... A better strategy would be [returning] to the core principles of good time management…Block out your calendar for the non-negotiable things. [Or] have an organized prioritized task list." – Laura Stack (quoted in Zawacki)

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

2.1 Wireframe a resource management strategy using Info-Tech’s seven dimensions of resource management

Action the decision points across Info-Tech’s seven dimensions to ensure your resource management process is guided by realistic data and process goals.

2.3 Draft a high-level resource management workflow and elaborate it into a repeatable practice

Customize Info-Tech’s five-step resource management process model. Then, document how the process will operate by customizing the Resource Management Playbook.

Phase 3

Implement Sustainable Resource Management Practices

Phase 3 outline

Call 1-888-670-8889 or email GuidedImplementations@InfoTech.com for more information.

Complete these steps on your own, or call us to complete a guided implementation. A guided implementation is a series of 2-3 advisory calls that help you execute each phase of a project. They are included in most advisory memberships.

Guided Implementation 3: Implement Sustainable Resource Management Practices

Proposed Time to Completion (in weeks): 4-12 weeks

Step 3.1: Pilot your resource management process

Start with an analyst kick-off call:

• Review your resource management dimensions and tools
• Review your provisional resource management processes
• Discuss your ideas for a pilot

Then complete these activities…

• Select receptive project/functional managers to work with
• Define the scope of your pilot and determine logistics
• Finalize resource management roles and responsibilities

With these tools & templates:

• Process Pilot Plan Template
• Resource Management Playbook
• Project Portfolio Analyst Job Description

Step 3.2: Plan to engage your stakeholders

Review findings with analyst:

• Results of your pilot, team feedback, and lessons learned
• Your stakeholder landscape

Then complete these activities…

• Brainstorm and plan for potential resistance to change, objections, and fatigue from stakeholders
• Plan for next steps

With these tools & templates:

• Resource Management Playbook

Phase 3 Results & Insights:

Engagement paves the way for smoother adoption. An engagement approach (rather than simply communication) turns stakeholders into advocates who can help boost your message, sustain the change, and realize benefits without constant intervention or process command-and-control.

Step 3.1: Pilot your resource management process to assess viability

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Select receptive project and functional managers to work with during your pilot
• Define the scope of your pilot and determine logistics
• Plan to obtain feedback, document lessons learned, and create an action plan for any changes
• Finalize resource management roles and responsibilities

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Project Managers
• Resource Managers

Outcomes of this step

• A pilot team
• A process pilot plan that defines the scope, logistics, and process for retrospection
• Roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities for resource management
• Project Portfolio Analyst job description template

Pilot your new processes to test feasibility and address issues before a full deployment

Adopting the right set of practices requires a significant degree of change that necessitates buy-in from varied stakeholders throughout IT and the business.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Similarly, your visibility into resource usage and availability won’t happen overnight.

Resist the urge to deploy a big-bang rollout of your research management practices. This approach is ill advised for two main reasons:

• It will put more of a strain on the implementation team in the near term, with a larger pool of end users to train and collect data from.
• Putting untested practices in a department-wide spotlight could lead to mass confusion in the near-term and color the new processes in a negative light, leading to a loss of stakeholder trust and engagement right out of the gate.

Start with a pilot phase. Identify receptive project managers and functional managers to work with, and leverage their insights to help iron out the kinks in your process before unveiling your practices to IT and business users at large.

This step will help you:

• Plan and execute a pilot of the processes we developed in Phase 2.
• Incorporate the lessons learned from that pilot to strengthen your playbook and ease the communication process.

Info-Tech Insight

Engagement paves the way for smoother adoption. An engagement approach (rather than simply communication) turns stakeholders into advocates who can help boost your message, sustain the change, and realize benefits without constant intervention or process command-and-control.

Plan your pilot like you would any project to ensure it’s well defined and its goals are clearly articulated

Use Info-Tech’s Process Pilot Plan Template to help define the scope of your pilot and set appropriate goals for the test run of your new processes.

A process pilot is a limited scope of an implementation (constrained by time and resources involved) to test the viability and effectiveness of the process as it has been designed.

• Investing time and energy into a pilot phase can help to lower implementation risk, enhance the details and steps within a process, and improve stakeholder relations prior to a full scale rollout.
• More than a dry run, however, a pilot should be approached strategically and planned out to limit the scope of it and achieve specific outcomes.
• Leverage a planning document to ensure your process pilot is grounded in a common set of definitions, that the pilot is delivering value and insight, and that ultimately the pilot can serve as a starting point for a full-scale process implementation.

"The advantages to a pilot are several. First, risk is constrained. Pilots are closely monitored so if a problem does occur, it can be fixed immediately. Second, the people working in the pilot can become trainers as you roll the process out to the rest of the organization. Third, the pilot is another opportunity for skeptics to visit the pilot process and learn from those working in it. There’s nothing like seeing a new process working for people to change their minds." – Daniel Madison

Download Info-Tech’s Process Pilot Plan Template

Select receptive project and functional managers to work with during your pilot

3.1.1
20 to 60 minutes

Input

• Project management staff and functional managers

Output

• Pilot project teams

Materials

• Stakeholder Engagement Workbook
• Process Pilot Plan Template

Participants

• Process owner (PMO director or portfolio owner)
• CIO

Info-Tech recommends selecting project managers and functional managers who are aware of your role and some of the supply-demand challenges to assist in the implementation process.

1. If receptive project and functional managers are known, schedule a 15-minute meeting with them to inquire if they would be willing to be part of the pilot process.
2. If receptive project managers are not known, use Info-Tech’s Stakeholder Engagement Workbook to conduct a formal selection process.
   1. Enter a list of potential pilot project managers in tab 3.
   2. Rate project managers in terms of influence, pilot interest, and potential deployment contribution within tab 4.
   3. Review tab 5 in the workbook. Receptive project managers will appear in the top quadrants. Ideal project managers for the pilot are located in the top right quadrant of the graph.

Document the project and functional managers involved in your pilot in Section 3 of Info-Tech’s Process Pilot Plan Template.

Define the scope of your pilot and determine logistics

Input

• Sections 1 through 4 of the Process Pilot Plan Template

Output

• A process pilot plan

Materials

• Process Pilot Plan Template

Participants

• Process Owner (PMO Director or Portfolio Owner)
• CIO
• Project and Resource Managers

Use Info-Tech’s Process Pilot Plan Template to design the details of your pilot.

Investing time into planning your pilot phase strategically will ensure a clear scope, better communications for those piloting the processes, and overall, better, more actionable results during the pilot phase. The Process Pilot Plan Template is broken into five sections to assist in these goals:

• Pilot Overview and Scope
• Success and Risk Factors
• Stakeholders Involved and Communications Plan
• Pilot Retrospective and Feedback Protocol
• Lessons Learned
• The duration of your pilot should go at least one allocation period, depending on your frequency of updates, e.g. one week or month.
• Estimates of time commitments should be captured for each stakeholder. During the retrospective at the end of the pilot, you should capture actuals to help determine the time-cost of the process itself and measure its sustainability.
• Once the template is completed, schedule time to share and communicate it with the pilot team and executive sponsors of the process.

While you should invest time in this planning document, continue to lean on the Resource Management Playbook as well as a process guide throughout the pilot phase.

Execute your pilot and prepare to make process revisions before the full rollout

Hit play! Begin the process pilot and get familiar with the work routine and resource management solution.

Some things to keep in mind during the pilot include:

• Depending on the solution you’re using, you will likely need to spend one day or less to populate the tool. During the pilot, measure the time and effort required to manage the data within the tool. Compare with the original estimate from activity 2.2.2. Determine whether time and effort required are viable on an ongoing basis (i.e. can you do it every week or month) and have value.
• Meet with the pilot team and other stakeholders regularly during the pilot – at least weekly. Allow the team (and yourself) to speak honestly and openly about what isn’t working. The pilot is your chance to make things better.
• Keep notes about what will need to change in the RM Playbook. For major changes, you may have to tweak the process during the pilot itself. Update the process documents as needed and communicate the changes and why they’re being made. If required, update the scope of the pilot in the Process Pilot Plan Template.

Obtain feedback from the pilot group to improve your processes before a wider rollout

3.1.3
30 minutes

Input

• What’s working and what isn’t in the process

Output

• Ideas to improve process

Materials

• Whiteboard
• Sticky notes
• Process Pilot Plan Template

Participants

• Process Owner (PMO Director or Portfolio Owner)
• Pilot Team

Pilot projects allow you to validate your assumptions and leverage lessons learned. During the planning of the pilot, you should have scheduled a retrospective meeting with the pilot team to formally assess strengths and weaknesses in the process you have drafted.

• Schedule the retrospective shortly after the pilot is completed. Info-Tech recommends a stop/start/continue activity with pilot participants to obtain and capture feedback.
• Have members of the meeting record any processes/activities on sticky notes that should:
  • Stop: because they are ineffective or not useful
  • Start: because they would be useful for the tool and have not been incorporated into current processes
  • Continue: because they are useful and positively contribute to intended process outcomes

An example of how to structure a stop/start/continue activity on a whiteboard using sticky notes.

See below for additional instructions

Document lessons learned and create an action plan for any changes to the resource management processes

3.1.4
30 minutes

As a group, discuss everyone’s responses and organize according to top priority (mark with a 1) and lower priority/next steps (mark with a 2). At this point, you can also remove any sticky notes that are repetitive or no longer relevant.

Once you have organized based on priority, be sure to come to a consensus with the group regarding which actions to take. For example, if the group agrees that they should “stop holding meetings weekly,” come to a consensus regarding how often meetings will be held, i.e. monthly.

Create an action plan for the top priority items that require changes (the stops and starts). Record in this slide or your preferred medium. Be sure to include who is responsible for the action and the date that it will be implemented.

Document the outcomes of the start/stop/continue exercise and your action plan in Section 6 of Info-Tech’s Process Pilot Plan Template.

Review actions that can be taken based on the results of your pilot

Finalize resource management roles and responsibilities

3.1.5
15 to 30 minutes

Input

• Tasks for resource management
• Stakeholder involved

Output

• Roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities for resource management

Materials

• Resource Management Playbook

Participants

• PMO Director/ Portfolio Manager
• Functional Managers
• Project Managers

Perform a RACI exercise to help standardize terminology around roles and responsibilities and to ensure that expectations are consistent across stakeholders and teams.

• A RACI will help create a clear understanding of the tasks and expectations for each stakeholder at each process step, assigning responsibilities and accountability for resource management outcomes.

Responsible

Accountable

Consulted

Informed

Document your roles and responsibilities in Section 2 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook.

Use Info-Tech’s Portfolio Analyst job description to help fill any staffing needs around data maintenance

3.1 Project Portfolio Analyst/PMO Analyst Job Description

You will need to determine responsibilities and accountabilities for portfolio management functions within your team.

If you do not have a clearly identifiable portfolio manager at this time, you will need to clarify who will wear which hats in terms of facilitating intake and prioritization, high-level capacity awareness, and portfolio reporting.

• Use Info-Tech’s Project Portfolio Analyst job description template to help clarify some of the required responsibilities to support your PPM strategy.
  • If you need to bring in an additional staff member to help support the strategy, you can customize the job description template to help advertise the position. Simply edit the text in grey within the template.
• If you have other PPM tasks that you need to define responsibilities for, you can use the RASCI chart on the final tab of the PPM Strategy Development Tool.

Download Info-Tech’s Project Portfolio Analyst Job Description Template

Finalize the Resource Management Playbook and prepare to communicate your processes

Once you’ve completed the pilot process and made the necessary tweaks, you should finalize your Resource Management Playbook and prepare to communicate it.

Revisit your RM Playbook from step 2.3 and ensure it has been updated to reflect the process changes that were identified in activity 3.1.4.

• If during the pilot process the data was too difficult or time consuming to maintain, revisit the dimensions you have chosen and select dimensions that are easier to accurately maintain. Tweak your process steps in the playbook accordingly.
• In the long term, if you are not observing any capacity being reclaimed, revisit the roadmap that we’ll prepare in step 3.2 and address some of these inhibitors to organizational change.
• In the next step, we will also be repurposing some of the content from the playbook, as well as from previous activities, to include them in your presentation to stakeholders, using Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template.

Download Info-Tech’s Resource Management Playbook

Info-Tech Best Practice

Make your process standardization comprehensive. The RM Playbook should serve as your resource management standard operating procedure. In addition to providing a walk-through of the process, an SOP also clarifies project governance by clearly defining roles and responsibilities.

Step 3.2: Plan to engage your stakeholders with your playbook

PHASE 1

1.1 Set a course of action

1.2 Estimate supply and demand

PHASE 2

2.1 Select resource management dimensions

2.2 Select resource management tools

2.3 Build process steps

PHASE 3

3.1 Pilot your process for viability

3.2 Plan stakeholder engagement

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Brainstorm and plan for potential resistance to change, objections, and fatigue from stakeholders
• Plan for next steps in reclaiming project capacity
• Plan for next steps in overcoming supply-demand reconciliation challenges

This step involves the following participants:

• CIO
• PMO Director / Portfolio Manager
• Pilot Team from Step 3.1

Outcomes of this step

• Plan for communicating responses and objections from stakeholders and staff
• Plan to manage structural/enabling factors that influence success of the resource management strategy
• Description of next steps in reclaiming project capacity and overcoming supply-demand reconciliation challenges
• Final draft of the customized Resource Management Playbook

Develop a resource management roadmap to communicate and reinforce the strategy

A roadmap will help anticipate, plan, and address barriers and opportunities that influence the success of the resource management strategy.

This step of the project will ensure the new strategy is adopted and applied with maximum success by helping you manage challenges and opportunities across three dimensions:

1. Executive Stakeholder Factors

For example, resistance to adopting new assumptions about ratio of project versus non-project work.

2. Workforce/Team Factors

For example, resistance to moving from individual- to team-based allocations.

3. Structural Factors

For example, ensuring priorities are stable within the chosen resource planning horizon.

See Info-Tech’s Drive Organizational Change from the PMOfor comprehensive tools and guidance on achieving organizational buy-in for your new resource management practices.

Info-Tech Insight

Communicate, communicate, communicate. Staff are 34% more likely to adapt to change quickly during the implementation and adoption phases when they are provided with a timeline of impending changes specific to their department. (McLean & Company)

Anticipate a wide range of responses toward your new processes

While your mandate may be backed by an executive sponsor, you will need to influence stakeholders from throughout the organization in order to succeed. Indeed, as EPMO leader, success will depend upon your ability to confirm and reaffirm commitments on soft or informal grounds. Prepare an engagement strategy that anticipates a wide range of responses.

Info-Tech Insight

Hone your stakeholder engagement strategy. Most people affected by an IT-enabled change tend to be fence-sitters. Small minorities will be enthusiasts, saboteurs, and skeptics. Your communication strategy should focus on engaging the skeptics, saboteurs, and enthusiasts. Fence-sitters will follow.

Define plans to deal with resistance to change, objections, and fatigue

Be prepared to confront skeptics and saboteurs when communicating the change.

1. Use the templates on the following slide to:
   1. Brainstorm possible objections from stakeholders and staff. Prioritize objections that are likely to occur.
   2. Develop responses to objections.
2. Develop a document and plan for proactively communicating responses and objections to show people that you understand their point of view.
   1. Revise the communications messaging and plan to include proactive objection handling.
3. Discuss the likelihood and impact of “saboteurs” who aren’t convinced or affected by change management efforts.
   1. Explore contingency plans for dealing with difficult saboteurs. These individuals can negate the progress of the rest of the team by continuing to resist the process and spreading toxic energy. If necessary, be ruthless with these individuals. Let them know that the rest of the group is moving on without them, and if they can’t or won’t adopt the new standards, then they can leave.

Info-Tech Insight

Communicate well and engage often. Agility and continuous improvement are good, but can degenerate into volatility if change isn’t managed properly. People will perceive change to be volatile if their expectations aren’t managed through communications and engagement planning.

Info-Tech Best Practice

The individuals best positioned to provide insight and influence change positively are also best positioned to create resistance.

These people should be engaged early and often in the implementation process – not just to make them feel included or part of the change, but also because their insight could very likely identify risks, barriers, and opportunities that need to be addressed.

Develop a plan to manage stakeholder resistance to the new resource management strategy

3.2.1
30 minutes

Brainstorm potential implications and objections that executive stakeholders might raise about your new processes.

Document the outcomes of this activity on slide 26 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template.

Develop a plan to manage staff/team resistance to the new resource management strategy

3.2.2
30 minutes

Brainstorm potential implications and objections that individual staff and members of project teams might raise about your new processes.

Document the outcomes of this activity on slide 27 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template.

Develop a plan to manage structural/enabling factors that influence success of the resource management strategy

3.2.3
30 minutes

Brainstorm a plan to manage other risks and challenges to implementing your processes.

Document the outcomes of this activity on slide 28 of Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template.

Finalize your communications plan and prepare to present the new processes to the organization

Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template to record the challenges your resource management strategy is addressing and how it is addressing them.

Highlight organizational factors that necessitated the change.

• Stakeholders and staff understandably tend to dislike change for the sake of change. Use Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template to document the pain points that your process change is addressing and explain the intended benefits for all who will be subject to the new procedures.

Determine goals and benefits for implementation success.

• Provide metrics by which the implementation will be deemed a success. Providing this horizon will provide some structure for stakeholders and hopefully help to encourage process discipline.

Clearly indicate what is required of people to adopt new processes.

• Document your Resource Management Playbook. Be sure to include specific roles and responsibilities so there is no doubt regarding who is accountable for what.

Download Info-Tech’s Resource Management Communications Template

"You need to be able to communicate effectively with major stakeholders – you really need their buy-in. You need to demonstrate credibility with your audience in the way you communicate and show how portfolio [management] is a structured decision-making process." – Dr. Shan Rajegopal (quoted in Akass, “What Makes a Successful Portfolio Manager”)

Review tactics for keeping your processes on track

Once the strategy is adopted, the next step is to be prepared to address challenges as they come up. Review the tactics in the table below for assistance.

See below for additional challenges and tactics

Review tactics for keeping supply and demand aligned

Once the strategy is adopted, the next step is to use the outputs of the strategy to reclaim capacity and ensure supply and demand remain aligned. Review the tactics in the table below for assistance.

Prepare to communicate your new resource management practices and reap their benefits

As you roll out your resource management strategy, familiarize yourself with the capability improvements that will drive your resource management success metrics.

1. Increased capacity awareness through the ability to more efficiently and more effectively collect and track complex, diverse, and dynamic project data across the project portfolio.
2. Improved supply management. Increased awareness of resource capacity (current and forecasted) combined with the ability to see the results of resource allocations across the portfolio will help ensure that project resources are used as effectively as possible.
3. Improved demand management. Increased capacity awareness, combined with reliable supply management, will help PMOs set realistic limits on the amount and kind of IT projects the organization can take on at any given time. The ability to present user-friendly reports to key decision makers will help the PMO to ensure that the projects that are approved are realistically attainable and strategically aligned.
4. Increased portfolio success. Improvements in the three areas indicated above should result in more realistic demands on project workers/managers, better products, and better service to all stakeholders. While successfully implemented PPM solutions should produce more efficient PPM processes, ideally they should also drive improved project stakeholder satisfaction across the organization.

Info-Tech client achieves resource management success by right-sizing its data requirements and focusing on reporting

CASE STUDY

Industry Manufacturing

Source Info-Tech Client

“We were concerned that the staff would not want to do timesheets. With one level of task definition, it’s not really timesheets. It’s more about reconciling our allocations.” – PMO Director, Manufacturing

Challenge

• In a very fast-paced environment, the PMO had developed a meaningful level of process maturity.
• There had never been time to slow down enough to introduce a mature PPM tool set.
• The executive leadership had started to ask for more throughput of highly visible IT projects.

Solution

• There had never been oversight on how much IT time went toward escalated support issues and smaller enhancement requests.
• Staff had grown accustomed to a lack of documentation rigor surrounding the portfolio.
• Despite a historic baseline of the ratio between strategic projects, small projects, and support, the lack of recordkeeping made it hard to validate or reconcile these ratios.

Results

• The organization introduced a robust commercial PPM tool.
• They were able to restrict the granularity of data to a high level in order to limit the time required to enter and manage, and track the actuals.
• They prepared executive leadership for their renewed focus on the allocation of resources to strategically important projects.
• Approval of projects was right-sized based on the actual capacity and realized through improved timesheet recordkeeping.

If you want additional support, have our analysts guide you through this phase as part of an Info-Tech workshop

Book a workshop with our Info-Tech analysts:

• To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.
• Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team onsite at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.
• Contact your account manager (www.infotech.com/account), or email Workshops@InfoTech.com for more information.

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

3.1 Define the scope of your pilot and set appropriate goals for the test-run of your new processes

An effective pilot lowers implementation risk, enhances the details and steps within a process, and improves stakeholder relations prior to a full scale rollout.

3.2 Develop a plan to manage stakeholder and staff resistance to the new resource management practice

Proactively plan for communicating responses and objections to show people that you understand their point of view and win their buy-in.

Insight breakdown

Insight 1

A matrix organization creates many small, untraceable demands that are often overlooked in resource management efforts, which lead to underestimating total demand and overcommitting resources. To capture them and enhance the success of your resource management effort, focus on completeness rather than precision. Precision of data will improve over time as your process maturity grows.

Insight 2

Draft the resource management practice with sustainability in mind. It is about what you can and will maintain every week, even during a crisis: it is not about what you put together as a one-time snapshot. Once you stop maintaining resource data, it’s nearly impossible to catch up.

Insight 3

Engagement paves the way for smoother adoption. An engagement approach (rather than simply communication) turns stakeholders into advocates who can help boost your message, sustain the change, and realize benefits without constant intervention or process command-and-control.

Summary of accomplishment

Knowledge Gained

• Disconnect between traditional resource management paradigms and today’s reality of work environment
• Differentiation of accuracy and precision in capacity data
• Snapshot of resource capacity supply and demand
• Seven dimensions of resource management strategy
• How to create sustainability of a resource management practice

Processes Optimized

• Collecting resource supply data
• Capturing the project demand
• Identifying and documenting resource constraints and issues
• Resolving resource issues
• Finalizing and communicating resource allocations for the forecast window

Deliverable Completed

• Resource Management Supply-Demand Calculator, to create an initial estimate of resource capacity supply and demand
• Time-tracking survey emails, to validate assumptions made for creating the initial snapshot of resource capacity supply and demand
• Resource Management Playbook, which documents your resource management strategy dimensions, process steps, and responses to challenges
• PPM Solution Vendor Demo Script, to structure your resource management tool demos and interactions with vendors to ensure that their solutions can fully support your resource management practices
• Portfolio Manager Lite, a spreadsheet-based resource management solution to facilitate the flow of data
• Process Pilot Plan, to ensure that the pilot delivers value and insight necessary for a wider rollout
• Project Portfolio Analyst job description, to help your efforts in bringing in additional staff to provide support for the new resource management practice
• Resource Management Communications presentation, with which to engage your stakeholders during the new process rollout

Research contributors and experts

Trevor Bramwell, ICT Project Manager Viridor Waste Management

John Hansknecht, Director of Technology University of Detroit Jesuit High School & Academy

Brian Lasby, Project Manager Toronto Catholic District School Board

Jean Charles Parise, CIO & DSO Office of the Auditor General of Canada

Darren Schell, Associate Executive Director of IT Services University of Lethbridge

Related Info-Tech research

Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy

Grow Your Own PPM Solution

Optimize Project Intake, Approval, and Prioritization

Maintain and Organized Portfolio

Manage a Minimum-Viable PMO

Establish the Benefits Realization Process

Manage an Agile Portfolio

Tailor Project Management Processes to Fit Your Projects

Project Portfolio Management Diagnostic Program

The Project Portfolio Management Diagnostic Program is a low-effort, high-impact program designed to help project owners assess and improve their PPM practices. Gather and report on all aspects of your PPM environment to understand where you stand and how you can improve.

Bibliography

actiTIME. “How Poor Tracking of Work Time Affects Your Business.” N.p., Oct. 2016. Web.

Akass, Amanda. “What Makes a Successful Portfolio Manager.” Pcubed, n.d. Web.

Alexander, Moira. “5 Steps to avoid overcommitting resources on your IT projects.” TechRepublic. 18 July 2016. Web.

Anderson, Ryan. “Some Shocking Statistics About Interruptions in Your Work Environment.” Filevine, 9 July 2015. Web.

Bondale, Kiron. “Focus less on management and more on the resources with resource management.” Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice. 16 July 2014. Web.

Burger, Rachel. “10 Software Options that Will Make Your Project Resource Allocation Troubles Disappear.” Capterra Project Management Blog, 6 January 2016. Web.

Cooper, Robert, G. “Effective Gating: Make product innovation more productive by using gates with teeth.” Stage-Gate International and Product Development Institute. March/April 2009. Web.

Dimensional Research. “Lies, Damned Lies and Timesheet Data.” Replicon, July 2013. Web.

Edelman Trust Barometer. “Leadership in a Divided World.” 2016. Web.

Frank, T.A. “10 Execs with Time-Management Secrets You Should Steal.” Monday*. Issue 2: Nov-Dec 2014. Drucker Institute. Web.

Huth, Susanna. “Employees waste 759 hours each year due to workplace distractions.” The Telegraph, 22 Jun 2015. Web.

Jacobeus, Nicolas. “How Detailed Does Your Agency Time Tracking Need to Be?” Scale Blog, 18 Jul 2016. Web.

Lessing, Lawrence. Free Culture. Lulu Press Inc.: 30 July 2016.

Kwak, James. “The Importance of Excel. The Baseline Scenario, 9 Feb 2013. Web.

Madison, Daniel. “The Five Implementation Options to Manage the Risk in a New Process.” BPMInstitute.org. n.d. Web.

Mark, Gloria. Multitasking in the Digital Age. Morgan & Claypool Publishers. 1 April 2015

Maron, Shim. “Accountability Vs. Responsibility In Project Management.” Workfront, 10 June 2016. Web.

PM Solutions. “Resource Management and the PMO: Three Strategies for Addressing Your Biggest Challenge.” N.p., 2009. Web.

Project Management Institute. “Pulse of the Profession 2014.” PMI, 2014. Web.

Planview. “Capacity Planning Fuels Innovation Speed.” 2016. Web.

Rajda, Vilmos. “The Case Against Project Portfolio Management.” PMtimes, 1 Dec 2010. Web.

Reynolds, Justin. “The Sad Truth about Nap Pods at Work.” TINYpulse, 22 Aug 2016. Web.

Schulte, Brigid. “Work interrupts can cost you 6 hours a day. An efficiency expert explains how to avoid them.” Washington Post, 1 June 2015. Web.

Stone, Linda. "Continuous Partial Attention." Lindastone.net. N.p., n.d. Web.

Zawacki, Kevin. “The Perils of Time Tracking.” Fast Company, 26 Jan 2015. Web.

Establish High-Value IT Performance Dashboards and Metrics

Spend less time struggling with visuals and more time communicating about what matters to your executives.

Analyst Perspective

A dashboard is a communication tool that helps executives make data-driven decisions

CIOs naturally gravitate toward data and data analysis. This is their strength. They lean into this strength, using data to drive decisions, track performance, and set targets because they know good data drives good decisions.

However, when it comes to interpreting and communicating this complex information to executives who may be less familiar with data, CIOs struggle, often falling back on showing IT activity level data instead of what the executives care about. This results in missed opportunities to tell IT’s unique story, secure funding, reveal important trends, or highlight key opportunities for the organization.

Break through these traditional barriers by using Info-Tech’s ready-made IT dashboards. Spend less time agonizing over visuals and layout and more time concentrating on delivering IT information that moves the organization forward.

Diana MacPherson
Senior Research Analyst, CIO
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Info-Tech Insight

The purpose of a dashboard is to drive decision making. A well designed dashboard presents relevant, clear, concise insights that help executives make data-driven decisions.

Your challenge

CIOs struggle to select the right metrics and dashboards to communicate IT’s accomplishments, needs, and progress to their executives. CIOs:

• Fail to tailor metrics to their audience, often presenting graphs that are familiar and useful to them, but not their executives. This results in dashboards full of IT activities that executives neither understand nor find valuable.
• Do not consider the timeliness of their metrics, which has the same effect as not tailoring their metrics: the executives do not care about the metrics they are shown.
• Present too many metrics, which not only clutters the board but also dilutes the message the CIO needs to communicate.
• Do not act on the results of their metrics and show progress, which makes metrics meaningless. Why measure something if you won’t act on the results?

The bottom line: CIOs often communicate to the wrong audience, about the wrong things, in the wrong amount, using the wrong metrics, at the wrong time.

In a survey of 500 executives, organizations that struggled with dashboards identified the reasons as:
61% Inadequate context
54% Information overload

— Source: Exasol

CXOs and CIOs agree that IT performance metrics need improvement

When asked which performance indicators should be implemented in your business, CXOs and CIOs both agree that IT needs to improve its metrics across several activity areas: technology performance, cost and salary, and risk.

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards center key metrics around these activities ensuring you align your metrics to the needs of your CXO audience.

Info-Tech CEO/CIO Alignment Survey Benchmark Report n=666

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by the top CIO priorities

The top six areas that a CIO needs to prioritize and measure outcomes, no matter your organization or industry, are:

• Managing to a budget: Reducing operational costs and increasing strategic IT spend
• Customer/constituent satisfaction: Directly and indirectly impacting customer experience.
• Risk management: Actively knowing and mitigating threats to the organization.
• Delivering on business objectives: Aligning IT initiatives to the vision of the organization.
• Employee engagement: Creating an IT workforce of engaged and purpose-driven people.
• Business leadership relations: Establishing a network of influential business leaders.

Deliver High-Value IT Dashboards to Your Executives

Info-Tech’s approach

Deliver High-Value Dashboards to Your Executives

Executives recognize the benefits of dashboards:
87% of respondents to an Exasol study agreed that their organization’s leadership team would make more data-driven decisions if insights were presented in a simpler and more understandable way
(Source: Exasol)

The Info-Tech difference:

We created dashboards for you so you don’t have to!

1. Eliminate 80% of the dashboard design work by selecting from our ready-made Info-Tech IT Dashboards.
2. Use our IT Dashboard Workbook to adjust the dashboards to your audience and organization.
3. Follow our blueprint and IT Dashboard Workbook tool to craft, and deliver your dashboard to your CXO team, then action feedback from your audience to continuously improve.

Info-Tech’s methodology for establishing high-value dashboards

1. Test Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards Against Your Audience’s Needs

Phase Steps

1. Validate Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards for Your Audience
2. Identify and Document Your Audience’s Needs

Phase Outcomes

1. Initial impressions of Info-Tech IT Dashboards
2. Completed Tabs 2 of the IT Dashboard Workbook

2. Translate Audience Needs into Metrics

Phase Steps

1. Review Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards for Your Audience
2. Derive Metrics from Audience Needs
3. Associate metrics to Dashboards

Phase Outcomes

1. Completed IT Tab 3 of IT Dashboard Workbook

3. Ready Your Data for Dashboards

Phase Steps

1. Assess Data Inventory
2. Assess Data Quality
3. Assess Data Readiness
4. Assess Data Frequency

Phase Outcomes

1. Assessed Info-Tech IT Dashboards for your audience’s needs
2. Completed Tab 5 of the IT Dashboard Workbook
3. Finalized dashboards

4. Build and Deliver Your Dashboards

Phase Steps

1. Design Your Dashboard
2. Update Your Dashboards
3. Craft Your Story and Deliver Your Dashboards

Phase Outcomes

1. Completed IT Tab 5 and 6 of IT Dashboard Workbook and finalized dashboards

5. Plan, Record, and Action Your Metrics

Phase Steps

1. Plan How to Record Metrics
2. Record and Action Metrics

Phase Outcomes

1. Completed IT Dashboards tailored to your organization
2. Completed IT Dashboard Workbook

How to Use This Blueprint

Choose the path that works for you

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards address several needs:

1. New to dashboards and metrics and not sure where to begin? Let the phases in the blueprint guide you in using Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards to create your own dashboards.
2. Already know who your audience is and what you want to show? Augment the Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards framework with your own data and visuals.
3. Already have a tool you would like to use? Use the Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards as a design document to customize your tool.

Insight Summary

The need for easy-to-consume data is on the rise making dashboards a vital data communication tool.

70%: Of employees will be expected to use data heavily by 2025, an increase from 40% in 2018.
— Source: Tableau

Overarching insight

A dashboard’s primary purpose is to drive action. It may also serve secondary purposes to update, educate, and communicate, but if a dashboard does not drive action, it is not serving its purpose.

Insight 1

Start with the audience. Resist the urge to start with the data. Think about who your audience is, what internal and external environmental factors influence them, what problems they need to solve, what goals they need to achieve, then tailor the metrics and dashboards to suit.

Insight 2

Avoid showing IT activity-level metrics. Instead use CIO priority-based metrics to report on what matters to the organization. The Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by the CIO priorities: risks, financials, talent, and strategic initiatives.

Insight 3

Dashboards show the what not the why. Do not assume your audience will draw the same conclusions from your graphs and charts as you do. Provide the why by interpreting the results, adding insights and calls to action, and marking key areas for discussion.

Insight 4

A dashboard is a communication tool and should reflect the characteristics of good communication. Be clear, concise, consistent, and relevant.

Insight 5

Action your data. Act and report progress on your metrics. Gathering metrics has a cost, so if you do not plan to action a metric, do not measure it.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Blueprint benefits

CIO Benefits

• Reduces the burden of figuring out what metrics to show executives and how to categorize and arrange the visuals.
• Increases audience engagement through tools and methods that guide CIOs through tailoring metrics and dashboards to audience needs.
• Simplifies CIO messages so executives better understand IT needs and value.
• Provides CIOs with the tools to demonstrate transparency and competency to executive leaders.
• Provides tools and techniques for regular review and action planning of metrics results, which leads to improved performance, efficiency, and effectiveness.

Business Benefits

• Provides a richer understanding of the IT landscape and a clearer connection of how IT needs and issues impact the organization.
• Increases understanding of the IT team’s contribution to achieving business outcomes.
• Provides visibility into IT and business trends.
• Speeds up decision making by providing insights and interpretations to complex situations.

Measure the value of this blueprint

Realize measurable benefits after using Info-Tech’s approach:

Determining what you should measure, what visuals you should use, and how you should organize your visuals, is time consuming. Calculate the time it has taken you to research what metrics you should show, create the visuals, figure out how to categorize the visuals, and layout your visuals. Typically, this takes about 480 hours of time. Use the ready-made Info-Tech IT Dashboards and the IT Dashboard Workbook to quickly put together a set of dashboards to present your CXO. Using these tools will save approximately 480 hours.

A study at the University of Minnesota shows that visual presentations are 43% more effective at persuading their audiences (Bonsignore). Estimate how persuasive you are now by averaging how often you have convinced your audience to take a specific course of action. After using the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and visual story telling techniques described in this blueprint, average again. You should be 43% more persuasive.

Further value comes from making decisions faster. Baseline how long it takes, on average, for your executive team to make a decision before using Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards then time how long decisions take when you use your Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards. Your audience should reach decisions 21% faster according to studies at Stanford University and the Wharton School if business (Bonsignore).

Case Study

Visuals don’t have to be fancy to communicate clear messages.

• Industry: Construction
• Source: Anonymous interview participant

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit
"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation
"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop
"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting
"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostics and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization.

A typical GI is 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

Workshop overview

Day 1: Test Info-tech’s IT Dashboards Against Your Audience’s Needs and Translate Audience Needs Into Metrics

Activities
1.1 Review the info-Tech IT Dashboards and document impressions for your organization.
1.2 Identify your audience’s attributes.
1.3 Identify timeline and deadlines for dashboards.
1.4 Identify and prioritize audience needs and desired outcomes.
1.5 Associate metrics to each need.
1.6 Identify a dashboard for each metric.

Deliverables
1. Initial impressions of Info-Tech IT Dashboards.
2. Completed Tabs 2 and 3 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.

Day 2: Inventory Your Data; Assess Data Quality and Readiness

Activities
2.1 Complete a data inventory for each metric on each dashboard: determine how you will measure the metric, the KPI, any observation biases, the location of the data, the type of source, and the owner and security/compliance requirements.
2.2 Assess data quality for availability, accuracy, and standardization.
2.3 Assess data readiness and frequency of measurement and reporting.

Deliverables
1. Completed Tab 4 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.

Day 3: Design and Build Your Dashboards

Activities
3.1 Revisit the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and use the identified metrics to determine what should change on the dashboards.
3.2 Build your dashboards by editing the Info-Tech IT Dashboards with your changes as planned in Step 3.1.

Deliverables
1. Assessed Info-Tech IT Dashboards for your audience’s needs.
2. Completed Tab 5 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.
3. Finalized dashboards.

Day 4: Deliver Your Dashboard and Plan to Action Metrics

Activities
4.1 Craft your story.
4.2 Practice delivering your story.
4.3 Plan to action your metrics.
4.4 Understand how to record and address your results.

Deliverables
1. Completed Tabs 6 and 7 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.

Day 5: Next Steps and Wrap-Up (offsite)

Activities
5.1 Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days
5.2 Set up review time for workshop deliverables and to discuss next steps.

Deliverables
1. Completed IT Dashboards tailored to your organization.
2. Completed IT Dashboard Workbook.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com
1-888-670-8889

What is an IT dashboard?

An IT dashboard is…
a visual representation of data, and its main purpose is to drive actions. Well-designed dashboards use an easy to consume presentation style free of clutter. They present their audience with a curated set of visuals that present meaningful metrics to their audience.

Dashboards can be both automatically or manually updated and can show information that is dynamic or a snapshot in time.

Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Review the Info-Tech IT Dashboards

We created dashboards so you don’t have to.

Use the link below to download the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and consider the following:

1. What are your initial reactions to the dashboards?
2. Are the visuals appealing? If so, what makes them appealing?
3. Can you use these dashboards in your organization? What makes them usable?
4. How would you use these dashboards to speak your own IT information to your audience?

Download the Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Why Use Dashboards When We Have Data?

How graphics affect us

Cognitively

• Engage our imagination
• Stimulate the brain
• Heighten creative thinking
• Enhance or affect emotions

Emotionally

• Enhance comprehension
• Increase recollection
• Elevate communication
• Improve retention

Visual clues

• Help decode text
• Attract attention
• Increase memory

Persuasion

• 43% more effective than text alone

— Source: (Vogel et al.)

Phase 1

Test Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards Against Your Audience’s Needs

This phase will walk you through the following:

• Documenting impressions for using Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards for your audience.
• Documenting your audience and their needs and metrics for your IT dashboards

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Info-Tech IT Dashboard organization and audience

We created a compelling way to organize IT dashboards so you don’t have to. The Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO Priorities, and these are consistent irrespective of industry or organization. This is a constant that you can organize your metrics around.

Dashboard Customization

The categories represent a constant around which you can change the order; for example, if your CXO is more focused on Financials, you can switch the Financials dashboard to appear first.

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards are aimed at a CXO audience so if your audience is the CXO, then you may decide to change very little, but you can customize any visual to appeal to your audience.

Phase 1 will get you started with your audience.

Always start with the audience

…and not the data!

Reliable, accurate data plays a critical role in dashboards, but data is only worthwhile if it is relevant to the audience who consumes it, and dashboards are only as meaningful as the data and metrics they represent.

Instead of starting with the data, start with the audience. The more IT understands about the audience, the more relevant the metrics will be to their audience and the more aligned leadership will be with IT.

Don’t forget yourself and who you are. Your audience will have certain preconceived notions about who you are and what you do. Consider these when you think about what you want your audience to know.

Resist the Data-First Temptation

If you find yourself thinking about data and you haven’t thought about your audience, pull yourself back to the audience.

Meaningful measures rely on understanding your audience and their needs

It is crucial to think about who your audience is so that you can translate their needs into metrics and create meaningful visuals for your dashboards.

Step 1.1

Review and Validate Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards for Your Audience

Activities:
1.1.1 Examine Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Info-Tech dashboards reviewed for your organization’s audience.

1.1.1 Examine the Info-Tech IT Dashboards

30 minutes

1. If you haven’t already downloaded the Info-Tech IT Dashboards, click the link below to download.
2. Complete a quick review of the dashboards and consider how your audience would receive them.
3. Document your thoughts, with special emphasis on your audience in the Info-Tech Dashboard Impressions slide.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Reviewing visuals can help you think about how your audience will respond to them

Jot down your thoughts below. You can refer to this later as you consider your audience.

Consider:

• Who is your dashboard audience?
• Are their needs different from the Info-Tech IT Dashboard audience’s? If so, how?
• Will the visuals work for your audience on each dashboard?
• Will the order of the dashboards work for your audience?
• What is missing?

Step 1.2

Identify and Document Your Audience’s Needs

Activities:
1.2.1 Document your audience’s needs in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Audience details documented in IT Dashboard Workbook

Identify Your Audience and dig deeper to understand their needs

Connect with your audience

• Who is your audience?
• What does your audience care about? What matters to them?
• How is their individual success measured? What are their key performance indicators (KPIs)?
• Connect the challenges and pain points of your audience to how IT can help alleviate those pain points:
  • For example, poor financial performance could be due to a lack of digitization. Identify areas where IT can help alleviate this issue.
  • Try to uncover the root cause behind the need. Root causes are often tied to broad organizational objectives, so think about how IT can impact those objectives.

Validate the needs you’ve uncovered with the audience to ensure you have not misinterpreted them and clarify the desired timeline and deadline for the dashboard.

Document audiences and needs on Tab 2 of the IT Dashboard Workbook

Prioritize and select audience needs that your dashboard will address

Prioritize needs by asking:

• Which needs represent the largest value to the entire organization (i.e. needs that impact more of the organization than just the audience)?
• Which needs will have the largest impact on the audience’s success?
• Which needs are likely to drive action (e.g. if supporting a decision, is the audience likely to be amenable to changing the way they make that decision based on the data)?

Select three to five of the highest priority needs for each audience to include on a dashboard.

Prioritize needs on Tab 2 of the IT Dashboard Workbook

1.2.1 Document Your Audience Needs in the IT Dashboard Workbook

1 hour

Click the link below to download the IT Dashboard Workbook and open the file. Select Tab 2. The workbook contains pre-populated text that reflects information about Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards. You may want to keep the pre-populated text as reference as you identify your own audience then remove after you have completed your updates.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Phase 2

Translate Audience Needs Into Metrics

This phase will walk you through the following:

• Revisiting the Info-Tech IT Dashboards for your audience.
• Documenting your prioritized audience’s needs and the desired outcome of each in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Linking audience needs to metrics has positive outcomes

When you present metrics that your audience cares about, you:

• Deliver real value and demonstrate IT’s value as a trusted partner.
• Improve the relationship between the business and IT.
• Enlighten the business about what IT does and how it is connected to the organization.

29% of respondents to The Economist Intelligence Unit survey cited inadequate collaboration between IT and the business as one of the top barriers to the organization’s digital objectives.
— Source: Watson, Morag W., et al.

Dashboard Customization

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards use measures for each dashboard that correspond with what the audience (CXO) cares about. You can find these measures in the IT Dashboard Workbook. If your audience is the CXO, you may have to change a little but you should still validate the needs and metrics in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

Phase 2 covers the process of translating needs into metrics.

Once you know what your audience needs, you know what to measure

Step 2.1

Document Desired Outcomes for Each Prioritized Audience Need

Activities:
2.1.1 Compare the Info-Tech IT Dashboards with your audience’s needs.
2.1.2 Document prioritized audience needs and the desired outcome of each in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Understanding of how well Info-Tech IT Dashboards address audience needs.
• Documented desired outcomes for each audience need.

2.1.1 Revisit Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards and Review for Your Audience

30 minutes

1. If you haven’t already downloaded the Info-Tech IT Dashboards, click the link below to download.
2. Click the link below to download the Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook.
3. Recall your first impressions of the dashboards that you recorded on earlier in Phase 1 and open up the audience and needs information you documented in Tab 2 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.
4. Compare the dashboards with your audience’s needs that you documented on Tab 2.
5. Record any updates to your thoughts or impressions on the next slide. Think about any changes to the dashboards that you would make so that you can reference it when you build the dashboards.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

The Info-Tech IT Dashboards contain a set of monthly metrics tailored toward a CXO audience.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Knowing what your audience needs, do the metrics the visuals reflect address them?

Any changes to the Info-Tech IT Dashboards?

Consider:

• Are your audience’s needs already reflected in the visuals in each of the dashboards? If so, validate this in the next activity by reviewing the prioritized needs, desired outcomes, and associated metrics already documented in the IT Dashboard Workbook.
• Are there any visuals your audience would need that you don’t see reflected in the dashboards? Write them here to use in the next exercise.

Desired outcomes make identifying metrics easier

When it’s not immediately apparent what the link between needs and metrics is, brainstorm desired outcomes.

2.1.2 Document your audience’s desired outcome per prioritized need

Now that you’ve examined the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and considered the needs of your audience, it is time to understand the outcomes and goals of each need so that you can translate your audience’s needs into metrics.

1 hour

Click the link below to download the IT Dashboard Workbook and open the file. Select Tab 3. The workbook contains pre-populated text that reflects information about Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards. You may want to keep the pre-populated text as reference as you identify your own audience then remove it after you have completed your updates.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Deriving Meaningful Metrics

Once you know the desired outcomes, you can identify meaningful metrics

Common Metrics Mistakes

Avoid the following oversights when selecting your metrics.

Step 2.2

Derive Metrics From Audience Needs

Activities:
2.2.1 Derive metrics using the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and the IT Dashboard Workbook.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented metrics for audience needs.

2.2.1 Derive metrics from desired outcomes

Now that you have completed the desired outcomes, you can determine if you are meeting those desired outcomes. If you struggle with the metrics, revisit the desired outcomes. It could be that they are not measurable or are not specific enough.

2 hours

Click the link below to download the IT Dashboard Workbook and open the file. Select Tab 3. The workbook contains pre-populated text that reflects information about Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards. You may want to keep the pre-populated text as reference as you identify your own audience then remove it after you have completed your updates.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Download IT Metrics Library

Download HR Metrics Library

Step 2.3

Associate Metrics to Dashboards

Activities:
2.3.1 Review the metrics and identify which dashboard they should appear on.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Metrics associated to each dashboard.

2.3.1 Associate metrics to dashboards

30 minutes

Once you have identified all your metrics from Step 2.2, identify which dashboard they should appear on. As with all activities, if the Info-Tech IT Dashboard meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information.

Phase 3

Ready Your Data for Dashboards

This phase will walk you through the following:

• Inventorying your data
• Assessing your data quality
• Determining data readiness
• Determining data measurement frequency

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Can you measure your metrics?

Once appropriate service metrics are derived from business objectives, the next step is to determine how easily you can get your metric.

Make sure you select data that your audience trusts

40% of organizations say individuals within the business do not trust data insights.
— Source: Experian, 2020

Phase 3 covers the process of identifying data for each metric, creating a data inventory, assessing the readiness of your data, and documenting the frequency of measuring your data. Once complete, you will have a guide to help you add data to your dashboards.

Step 3.1

Assess Data Inventory

Activities:
3.1.1 Download the IT Dashboard Workbook and complete the data inventory section on Tab 4.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented data inventory for each metric.

3.1.1 Data Inventory

1 hour

Click the link below to download the IT Dashboard Workbook and open the file. Select Tab 4. The pre-populated text is arranged into the tables according to the dashboard they appear on; you may need to scroll down to see all the dashboard tables.

Create a data inventory by placing each metric identified on Tab 3 into the corresponding dashboard table. Complete each column as described below.

Metrics Libraries: Use the IT Metrics Library and HR Metrics Library for ideas for metrics to use and how to measure them.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Step 3.2

Assess Data Quality

Activities:
3.2.1 Use the IT Dashboard Workbook to complete an assessment of data quality on Tab 4.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented data quality assessment for each metric.

3.2.1 Assess Data Quality

1 hour

Document the data quality on Tab 4 of the IT Dashboard Workbook by filling in the data availability, data accuracy, and data standardization columns as described below.

Data quality is a struggle for many organizations. Consider how much uncertainty you can tolerate and what would be required to improve your data quality to an acceptable level. Consider cost, technological resources, people resources, and time required.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Step 3.3

Assess Data Readiness

Activities:
3.3.1 Use the IT Dashboard Workbook to determine the readiness of your data.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented data readiness for each metric

3.3.1 Determine Data Readiness

1 hour

Once the data quality has been documented and examined, complete the Data Readiness section of Tab 4 in the Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook. Select a readiness classification using the definitions below. Use the readiness of your data to determine the level of effort required to obtain the data and consider the constraints and cost/ROI to implement new technology or revise processes and data gathering to produce the data.

Remember: Although in most cases, simple formulas that can be easily understood are the best approach, both because effort is lower and data that is not manipulated is more trustworthy, do not abandon data because it is not perfect but instead plan to make it easier to obtain.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Step 3.4

Assess Data Frequency

Activities:
3.4.1 Use the IT Dashboard Workbook to determine the readiness of your data and how frequently you will measure your data.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented frequency of measurement for each metric.

3.4.1 Document Planned Frequency of measurement

10 minutes

Document the planned frequency of measurement for all your metrics on Tab 4 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.

For each metric, determine how often you will need to refresh it on the dashboard and select a frequency from the drop down. The Info-tech IT Dashboards assume a monthly refresh.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Phase 4

Build and Deliver Your Dashboards

This phase will walk you through the following:

• Designing your dashboards
• Updating your dashboards
• Crafting your story
• Delivering your dashboards

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Using your dashboard to tell your story with visuals

Now that you have linked metrics to the needs of your audience and you understand how to get your data, it is time to start building your dashboards.

Using visual language

• Shortens meetings by 24%
• Increases the ability to reach consensus by 21%
• Strengthens persuasiveness by 43%

— Source: American Management Association

Phase 4 guides you through using the Info-Tech IT Dashboard visuals for your audience’s needs and your story.

Step 4.1

Design Your Dashboard

Activities:
4.1.1 Plan and validate dashboard metrics, data, level of effort and visuals.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Identified and validated metrics, data, and visuals for your IT dashboards.

Use clear visuals that avoid distracting the audience

Which visual is better to present?

Sample A:

Sample B:

Select the appropriate visuals

Identify the purpose of the visualization. Determine which of the four categories below aligns with the story and choose the appropriate visual to display the data.

Relationship

Scatterplots

• Used to show relationships between two variables.
• Can be difficult to interpret for audiences that are not familiar with them.

Distribution

Histogram

• Use a histogram to show spread of a given numeric variable.
• Can be used to organize groups of data points.
• Requires continuous data.
• Can make comparisons difficult.

Scatterplot

• Can show correlation between variables.
• Show each data plot, making it easier to compare.

Composition

Pie chart

• Use pie charts to show different categories.
• Avoid pie charts with numerous slices.
• Provide numbers alongside slices, as it can be difficult to compare slices based on size alone.

Table

• Use tables when there are a large number of categories.
• Presents information in a simple way.

Comparison

Bar graph

• Use to compare categories.
• Easy to understand, familiar format.

Line chart

• Use to show trends or changes over time.
• Clear and easy to analyze.

(Calzon)

Examples of data visualization

To compare categories, use a bar chart:

Conclusion: Visualizing the spend in various areas helps prioritize.

To show trends, use a line graph:

Conclusion: Overlaying a trend line on revenue per employee helps justify headcount costs.

To show simple results, text is sometimes more clear:

Conclusion: Text with meaningful graphics conveys messages quickly.

To display relative percentages of values, use a pie chart:

Conclusion: Displaying proportions in a pie chart gives an at-a-glance understanding of the amount any area uses.

Choose effective colors and design

Select colors that will enhance the story

• Use color strategically to help draw the audience’s attention and highlight key information.
• Choose two to three colors to use consistently throughout the dashboard, as too many colors will be distracting to the audience.
• Use colors that connect with the audience (e.g., organization or department colors).
• Don’t use colors that are too similar in shade or brightness level, as those with colorblindness might have difficulty discerning them.

Keep the design simple and clear

• Leave white space to separate sections and keep the dashboard simple.
• Don’t measure everything; show just enough to address the audience’s needs.
• Use blank space between data points to provide natural contrast (e.g., leaving space between each bar on a bar graph). Don’t rely on contrast between colors to separate data (Miller).
• Label each data point directly instead of using a separate key, so anyone who has difficulty discerning color can still interpret the data (Miller).

Example

Checklist to build compelling visuals in your presentation

Leverage this checklist to ensure you are creating the perfect visuals and graphs for your presentation.

Checklist:

• Do the visuals grab the audience’s attention?
• Will the visuals mislead the audience/confuse them?
• Do the visuals facilitate data comparison or highlight trends and differences in a more effective manner than words?
• Do the visuals present information simply, cleanly, and accurately?
• Do the visuals illustrate messages and themes from the accompanying text?

4.1.1 Plan and validate your dashboard visuals

1 hour

Click the links below to download the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and the IT Dashboard Workbook. Open the IT Dashboard Workbook and select Tab 5. For each dashboard, represented by its own table, open the corresponding Info-Tech IT Dashboard as reference.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Step 4.2

Update Your Dashboards

Activities:
4.2.1 Update the visuals on the Info-Tech IT Dashboards with data and visuals identified in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Dashboards updated with your visuals, metrics, and data identified in the IT Dashboard Workbook.

4.2.1 Update visuals with your own data

2 hours

1. Get the data that you identified in Tab 4 and Tab 5 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.
2. Click the link below to go to the Info-Tech IT Dashboards and follow the instructions to update the visuals.

Do not worry about the Key Insights or Calls to Action; you will create this in the next step when you plan your story.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboards

Step 4.3

Craft Your Story and Deliver Your Dashboards

Activities:
4.3.1 Craft Your Story
4.3.2 Finalize Your Dashboards
4.3.3 Practice Delivering Your Story With Your Dashboards

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Documented situations, key insights, and calls to action for each dashboard/visual.
• A story to tell for each dashboard.
• Understanding of how to practice delivering the dashboards using stories.

Stories are more easily understood and more likely to drive decisions

IT dashboards are valuable tools to provide insights that drive decision making.

• Monitor: Track and report on strategic areas IT supports.
• Provide insights: sPresent important data and information to audiences in a clear and efficient way.

“Data storytelling is a universal language that everyone can understand – from people in STEM to arts and psychology.” — Peter Jackson, Chief Data and Analytics Officer at Exasol

Storytelling provides context, helping the audience understand and connect with data and metrics.

• 93% of respondents (business leaders and data professionals) agreed that decisions made as a result of successful data storytelling have the potential to help increase revenue.
• 92% of respondents agreed that data storytelling was critical to communicate insights effectively.
• 87% percent of respondents agreed that leadership teams would make more data-driven decisions if insights gathered from data were presented more simply.

— Exasol

For more visual guidance, download the IT Dashboard Guide

Include all the following pieces in your message for an effective communication

Info-Tech Insight

Time is a non-renewable resource. The message crafted must be considered a value-adding communication to your audience.

Enable good communication with these components

Be Consistent

• The core message must be consistent regardless of audience, channel, or medium.
• Test your communication with your team or colleagues to obtain feedback before delivering to a broader audience.
• A lack of consistency can be interpreted as an attempt at deception. This can hurt credibility and trust.

Be Clear

• Say what you mean and mean what you say.
• Choice of language is important: “Do you think this is a good idea? I think we could really benefit from your insights and experience here.” Or do you mean: “I think we should do this. I need you to do this to make it happen.”
• Avoid jargon.

Be Relevant

• Talk about what matters to the audience.
• Tailor the details of the message to the audience’s specific concerns.
• IT thinks in processes but wider audiences focus mostly on results; talk in terms of results.
• IT wants to be understood, but this does not matter to stakeholders. Think: “What’s in it for them?”
• Communicate truthfully; do not make false promises or hide bad news.

Be Concise

• Keep communication short and to the point so key messages are not lost in the noise.
• There is a risk of diluting your key message if you include too many other details.
• If you provide more information than necessary, the clarity and consistency of the message can be lost.

Draft the core messages to communicate

1. Hook your audience: Use a compelling introduction that ensures your target audience cares about the message. Start with a story or metaphor and then support with the data on your dashboard. Avoid rushing in with data first.
2. Demonstrate you can help: Let the audience know that based on the unique problem, you can help. There is value in engaging and working with you further.
3. Write for the ear: Use concise and clear sentences, avoid technological language, and when you read it aloud ensure it sounds like how you would normally speak.
4. Interpret visuals for your audience: Do not assume they will reach the same conclusions as you. For example, walk them through what a chart shows even if the axes are labeled, tell them what a trend line indicates or what the comparison between two data points means.
5. Identify a couple of key insights: Think about one or two key takeaways you want your audience to leave with.
6. Finish with a call to action: Your concluding statement should not be a thank-you but a call to action that ignites how your audience will behave after the communication. Dashboards exist to drive decisions, so if you have no call to action, you should ask if you need to include the visual.

4.3.1 Craft Your Story

1 hour

Click the link below to download the IT Dashboard Workbook and open the file. Select Tab 6. The workbook contains grey text that reflects a sample story about the Info-Tech IT Dashboards. You may want to keep the sample text as reference, then remove after you have entered your information.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

4.3.2 Finalize Your Dashboards

30 minutes

1. Take the Key Insights and Calls to Action that you documented in Tab 6 of the IT Dashboard Workbook and place them in their corresponding dashboard.
2. Add any text to your dashboard as necessary but only if the visual requires more information. You can add explanations more effectively during the presentation.

Tip: Aim to be brief and concise with any text. Dashboards simplify information and too much text can clutter the visuals and obscure the message.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

4.3.3 Practice Delivering Your Story With Your Dashboards

1 hour

Ideally you can present your dashboard to your audience so that you are available to clarify questions and add a layer of interpretation that would crowd out boards if added as text.

1. To prepare to tell your story, consult the Situation, Key Insights, and Call to Action sections that you documented for each dashboard in Tab 6 of the Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook.
2. Practice your messages as you walk through your dashboards. The next two slides provide delivery guidance.
3. Once you deliver your dashboards, update Tab 6 with audience feedback. Often dashboards are iterative and when your audience sees them, they are usually inspired to think about what else they would like to see. This is good and shows your audience is engaged!

Don’t overwhelm your audience with information and data. You spent time to craft your dashboards so that they are clear and concise, so spend time practicing delivering a message that matches your clear, concise dashboards

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Hone presentation skills before meeting with key stakeholders

Using voice and body

Think about the message you are trying to convey and how your body can support that delivery. Hands, stance, and frame all have an impact on what might be conveyed.

If you want your audience to lean in and be eager about your next point, consider using a pause or softer voice and volume.

Be professional and confident

State the main points of your dashboard confidently. While this should be obvious, it needs to be stated explicitly. Your audience should be able to clearly see that you believe the points you are stating.

Present in a way that is genuine to you and your voice. Whether you have an energetic personality or a calm and composed personality, the presentation should be authentic to you.

Connect with your audience

Look each member of the audience in the eye at least once during your presentation or if you are presenting remotely, look into the camera. Avoid looking at the ceiling, the back wall, or the floor. Your audience should feel engaged – this is essential to keeping their attention.

Avoid reading the text from your dashboard, and instead paraphrase it while maintaining eye/camera contact.

Info-Tech Insight

You are responsible for the response of your audience. If they aren’t engaged, it is on you as the communicator.

Communication Delivery Checklist

• Have you practiced delivering the communication to team members or coaches?
• Have you practiced delivering the communication to someone with little to no technology background?
• Are you making yourself open to feedback and improvement opportunities?
• If the communication is derailed from your plan, are you prepared to handle that change?
• Can you deliver the communication without reading your notes word for word?
• Have you adapted your voice throughout the communication to highlight specific components you want the audience to focus on?
• Are you presenting in a way that is genuine to you and your personality?
• Can you communicate the message within the time allotted?
• Are you moving in an appropriate manner based on your communication (e.g., toward the screen, across the stage, hand gestures)
• Do you have room for feedback on the dashboards? Solicit feedback with your audience after the meeting and record it in Tab 6 of the IT Dashboard Workbook.

Phase 5

Plan, record, and action your metrics

This phase will walk you through the following:

• Planning to track your metrics
• Recording your metrics
• Actioning your metrics

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Actioning your metrics to drive results

To deliver real value from your dashboards, you need to do something with the results.

Don’t fail on execution! The whole reason you labor to create inviting visuals and meaningful metrics is to action those metrics. The metrics results inform your entire story! It’s important to plan and do, but everything is lost if you fail to check and act.

70%: of survey respondents say that managers do not get insights from performance metrics to improve strategic decision making.
60%: of survey respondents say that operational teams do not get insights to improve operation decision making.

(Bernard Marr)

“Metrics aren’t a passive measure of progress but an active part of an organization’s everyday management….Applying the “plan–do–check–act” feedback loop…helps teams learn from their mistakes and identify good ideas that can be applied elsewhere”

(McKinsey)

Step 5.1

Plan How to Record Metrics

Activities:
5.1.1 For each dashboard, add a baseline and target to existing metrics and KPIs.

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Baselines and targets identified and recorded for each metric.

5.1.1 Identify Baselines and Targets

1 hour

To action your metrics, you must first establish what your baselines and targets are so that you can determine if you are on track.

To establish baselines:
If you do not have a baseline. Run your metric to establish one.

To establish targets:

• Use historical data and trends of performance.
• If you do not have historical data, establish an initial target based on stakeholder-identified requirements and expectations.
• You can also run the metrics report over a defined period of time and use the baseline level of achievement to establish an initial target.
• The target may not always be a number – it could be a trend. The initial target may be changed after review with stakeholders.

Actions for Success:
How will you ensure you can get this metric? For example, if you would like to measure delivered value, to make sure the metric is measurable, you will need to ensure that measures of success are documented for an imitative and then measured once complete.

• If you need help with Action plans, the IT Metrics Library includes action plans for all of its metrics that may help

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Step 5.2

Record and Action Metrics

Activities:
5.2.1 Record and Action Results

• Note, the Info-Tech IT Dashboards are organized by CIO priorities – Risk, Financials, Talent, and Strategic Initiatives – and address the needs of the CXO audience. The IT Dashboard Workbook is pre-populated with this information.
• If this meets your audience’s needs, you do not have to edit this content and can instead use the pre-populated information. You may wish to review the information to ensure it is still valid for your audience.

This phase involves the following participants:

• Senior IT leadership
• Dashboard SMEs

Outcomes of this step:

• Understanding of what and where to record metrics once run.

5.2.1 Record and Action Results

1 hour

After analyzing your results, use this information to update your dashboards. Revisit Tab 6 of the IT Dashboard Workbook to update your story. Remember to record any audience feedback about the dashboards in the Audience Feedback section.

Action your measures as well as your metrics

What should be measured can change over time as your organization matures and the business environment changes. Understanding what creates business value for your organization is critical. If metrics need to be changed, record metrics actions under Identified Actions on Tab 7. A metric will need to be addressed in one of the following ways:

• Added: A new metric is required or an existing metric needs large-scale changes (example: calculation method or scope).
• Changed: A minor change is required to the presentation format or data. Note: a major change in a metric would be performed through the Add option.
• Removed: The metric is no longer required, and it needs to be removed from reporting and data gathering. A final report date for that metric should be determined.
• Maintained: The metric is still useful and no changes are required to the metric, its measurement, or how it’s reported.

Don’t be discouraged if you need to update your metrics a few times before you get it right. It can take some trial and error to find the measures that best indicate the health of what you are measuring.

Download Info-Tech IT Dashboard Workbook

Tips for actioning results

Sometimes actioning your metrics results requires more analysis

If a metric deviates from your target, you may need to analyze how to correct the issue then run the metric again to see if the results have improved.

Identify Root Cause
Root Cause Analysis can include problem exploration techniques like The 5 Whys, fishbone diagrams, or affinity mapping.

Select a Solution
Once you have identified a possible root cause, use the same technique to brainstorm and select a solution then re-run your metrics.

Consider Tension Metrics
Consider tension metrics when selecting a solution. Will improving one area affect another? A car can go faster but it will consume more fuel – a project can be delivered faster but it may affect the quality.

Summary of Accomplishment

Problem Solved

1. Using this blueprint and the IT Dashboard Workbook, you validated and customized the dashboards for your audience and organization, which reduced or eliminated time spent searching for and organizing your own visuals.
2. You documented your dashboards’ story so you are ready to present them to your audience.
3. You assessed the data for your dashboards and you built a metrics action-tracking plan to maintain your dashboards’ metrics.

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through an Info-Tech workshop or Guided Implementation.

Contact your account representative for more information.
workshops@infotech.com
1-888-670-8889

Additional Support

If you would like additional support, have our analysts guide you through other phases as part of an Info-Tech Workshop.

To accelerate this project, engage your IT team in an Info-Tech workshop with an Info-Tech analyst team.

Info-Tech analysts will join you and your team at your location or welcome you to Info-Tech’s historic Toronto office to participate in an innovative onsite workshop.

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com
1-888-670-8889

The following are sample activities that will be conducted by Info-Tech analysts with your team:

Review the Info-Tech IT Dashboards
Determine how you can use the Info-Tech IT Dashboards in your organization and the anticipated level of customization.

Plan your dashboards
Complete the IT Dashboard Workbook to help plan your dashboards using Info-Tech’s IT Dashboards.

Research Contributors and Experts

John Corrado
Head of IT
X4 Pharmaceuticals

As head of IT, John is charged with the creation of strategic IT initiatives that align with X4s vision, mission, culture, and long-term goals and is responsible for the organization’s systems, security, and infrastructure. He works closely developing partnerships with X4tizens across the organization to deliver value through innovative programs and services.

Grant Frost
Chief Information & Security Officer
Niagara Catholic School Board

Grant Frost is an experienced executive, information technologist and security strategist with extensive experience in both the public and private sector. Grant is known for, and has extensive experience in, IT transformation and the ability to increase capability while decreasing cost in IT services.

Nick Scozzaro
CEO and Co-Founder of MobiStream and ShadowHQ
ShadowHQ

Nick got his start in software development and mobility working at BlackBerry where he developed a deep understanding of the technology landscape and of what is involved in both modernizing legacy systems and integrating new ones. Working with experts across multiple industries, he innovated, learned, strategized, and ultimately helped push the boundaries of what was possible.

Joseph Sanders
Managing Director of Technology/Cyber Security Services
Kentucky Housing Corporation

In his current role Joe oversees all IT Operations/Applications Services that are used to provide services and support to the citizens of Kentucky. Joe has 30+ years of leadership experience and has held several executive roles in the public and private sector. He has been a keynote speaker for various companies including HP, IBM, and Oracle.

Jochen Sievert
Director Performance Excellence & IT
Zeon Chemicals

Jochen moved to the USA from Duesseldorf, Germany in 2010 to join Zeon Chemicals as their IT Manager. Prior to Zeon, Jochen has held various technical positions at Novell, Microsoft, IBM, and Metro Management Systems.

Info-Tech Contributors

Ibrahim Abdel-Kader, Research Analyst
Donna Bales, Principal Research Director
Shashi Bellamkonda, Principal Research Director
John Burwash, Executive Counselor
Tony Denford, Research Lead
Jody Gunderman, Senior Executive Advisor
Tom Hawley, Managing Partner
Mike Higginbotham, Executive Counselor
Valence Howden, Principal Research Director
Dave Kish, Practice Lead
Carlene McCubbin, Practice Lead
Jennifer Perrier, Principal Research Director
Gary Rietz, Executive Counselor
Steve Schmidt, Senior Managing Partner
Aaron Shum, Vice President, Security & Privacy
Ian Tyler-Clarke, Executive Counselor

Plus, an additional four contributors who wish to remain anonymous.

Related Info-Tech Research

Bibliography

“10 Signs You Are Sitting on a Pile of Data Debt.” Experian, n.d. Web.

“From the What to the Why: How Data Storytelling Is Key to Success.” Exasol, 2021. Web.

Bonsignore, Marian. “Using Visual Language to Create the Case for Change.” Amarican Management Association. Accessed 19 Apr. 2023.

Calzon, Bernardita. “Top 25 Dashboard Design Principles, Best Practices & How To’s.” Datapine, 5 Apr. 2023.

“Data Literacy.” Tableau, n.d. Accessed 3 May 2023.

“KPIs Don’t Improve Decision-Making In Most Organizations.” LinkedIn, n.d. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Miller, Amanda. “A Comprehensive Guide to Accessible Data Visualization.” Betterment, 2020. Accessed May 2022.

“Performance Management: Why Keeping Score Is so Important, and so Hard.” McKinsey. Accessed 2 May 2023.

Vogel, Douglas, et al. Persuasion and the Role of Visual Presentation Support: The UM/3M Study. Management Information Systems Research Center School of Management University of Minnesota, 1986.

Watson, Morag W., et al. ”IT’s Changing Mandate in an Age of Disruption.” The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited, 2021.

Security Priorities 2023

How we live post pandemic

Each organization is different, so a generic list of priorities will not be applicable to every organization.

During 2022, ransomware campaigns declined from quarter to quarter due to the collapse of experienced groups. Several smaller groups are developing to recapture the lost ransomware market. However, ransomware is still the most worrying cyber threat.

Also in 2022, people returned to normal activities such as traveling and attending sports or music events but not yet to the office. The reasons behind this trend can be many fold, such as employees perceive that work from home (WFH) has positive productivity effects and time flexibility for employees, especially for those with families with younger children. On the other side of the spectrum, some employers perceive that WFH has negative productivity effects and thus are urging employees to return to the office. However, employers also understand the competition to retain skilled workers is harder. Thus, the trend is to have hybrid work where eligible employees can WFH for a certain portion of their work week.

Besides ransomware and the hybrid work model, in 2022, we saw an evolving threat landscape, regulatory changes, and the potential for a recession by the end of 2023, which can impact how we prioritize cybersecurity this year. Furthermore, organizations are still facing the ongoing issues of insufficient cybersecurity resources and organization modernization.

This report will explore important security trends, the security priorities that stem from these trends, and how to customize these priorities for your organization.

In Q2 2022, the median ransom payment was $36,360 (-51% from Q1 2022), a continuation of a downward trend since Q4 2021 when the ransom payment median was $117,116.
Source: Coveware, 2022

From January until October 2022, hybrid work grew in almost all industries in Canada especially finance, insurance, real estate, rental and leasing (+14.7%), public administration and professional services (+11.8%), and scientific and technical services (+10.8%).
Source: Statistics Canada, Labour Force Survey, October 2022; N=3,701

Hybrid work changes processes and infrastructure

Investment on remote work due to changes in processes and infrastructure

As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we used the results from our State of Hybrid Work in IT Survey, which collected responses between July 10 and July 29, 2022 (total N=745, with n=518 completed surveys). This survey details what changes in processes and IT infrastructure are likely due to hybrid work.

Process changes to support hybrid work

Survey respondents (n=518) were asked what processes had the highest degree of change in response to supporting hybrid work. Incident management is the #1 result and service request support is #2. This is unsurprising considering that remote work changed how people communicate, how they access company assets, and how they connect to the company network and infrastructure.

Infrastructure changes to support hybrid work

For 2023, we believe that hybrid work will remain. The first driver is that employees still prefer to work remotely for certain days of the week. The second driver is the investment from employers on enabling WFH during the pandemic, such as updated network architecture (44%) and the infrastructure and day-to-day operations (41%) as shown on our survey.

Top cybersecurity concerns and organizational preparedness for them

Concerns may correspond to readiness.

In the Info-Tech Research Group 2023 Trends and Priorities Survey of IT professionals, we asked about cybersecurity concerns and the perception about readiness to meet current and future government legislation regarding cybersecurity requirements.

Cybersecurity issues

Survey respondents were asked how concerned they are about certain cybersecurity issues from 1 (not concerned at all) to 5 (very concerned). The #1 concern was talent shortages. Other issues with similar concerns included cyber risks not on leadership's radar, supply chain risks, and new regulations (n=507).

Cybersecurity legislation readiness

When asked about how confident organizations are about being prepared to meet current and future government legislation regarding cybersecurity requirements, from 1 (not confident at all) to 5 (very confident), the #1 response was 3 (n=499).

Unsurprisingly, the ever-changing government legislation environment in a world emerging from a pandemic and ongoing wars may not give us the highest confidence.

We know the concerns and readiness…

But what is the overall security maturity?

As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we reviewed results of completed Info-Tech Research Group Security Governance and Management Benchmark diagnostics (N=912). This report details what we see in our clients' security governance maturity. Setting aside the perception on readiness – what are their actual security maturity levels?

Overall, assessed organizations are still scoring low (47%) on Security Culture and Policy and Process Governance. This justifies why most security incidents are still due to gaps in foundational security and security awareness, not lack of advanced controls such as event and incident management (58%).

And how will the potential recession impact security?

Organizations are preparing for recession, but opportunities for growth during recession should be well planned too.

As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we reviewed the results of the Info-Tech Research Group 2023 Trends and Priorities Survey of IT professionals, which collected responses between August 9 and September 9, 2022 (total N=813 with n=521 completed surveys).

Expected organizational spending on cybersecurity compared to the previous fiscal year

Keeping the same spending is the #1 result and #2 is increasing spending up to 10%. This is a surprising finding considering the survey was conducted after the middle of 2022 and a recession has been predicted since early 2022 (n=489).

Five Security Priorities for 2023

Maintain Secure Hybrid Work

PRIORITY 01

• HOW TO STRATEGICALLY ACQUIRE, RETAIN, OR UPSKILL TALENT TO MAINTAIN SECURE SYSTEMS.

Executive summary

Background

If anything can be learned from COVID-19 pandemic, it is that humans are resilient. We swiftly changed to remote workplaces and adjusted people, processes, and technologies accordingly. We had some hiccups along the way, but overall, we demonstrated that our ability to adjust is amazing.

The pandemic changed how people work and how and where they choose to work, and most people still want a hybrid work model. However, the number of days for hybrid work itself varies. For example, from our survey in July 2022 (n=516), 55.8% of employees have the option of 2-3 days per week to work offsite, 21.0% for 1 day per week, and 17.8% for 4 days per week.

Furthermore, the investment (e.g. on infrastructure and networks) to initiate remote work was huge, and the cost doesn't end there, as we need to maintain the secure remote work infrastructure to facilitate the hybrid work model.

Current situation

Remote work: A 2022 survey by WFH Research (N=16,451) reports that ~14% of full-time employees are fully remote and ~29% are in a hybrid arrangement as of Summer-Fall 2022.

Security workforce shortage: A 2022 survey by Bridewell (N=521) reports that 68% of leaders say it has become harder to recruit the right people, impacting organizational ability to secure and monitor systems.

Confidence in the security practice: A 2022 diagnostic survey by Info-Tech Research Group (N=55) reports that importance may not correspond to confidence; for example, the most important selected cybersecurity area, namely Data Access/Integrity (93.7%), surprisingly has the lowest confidence of the practice (80.5%).

"WFH doubled every 15 years pre-pandemic. The increase in WFH during the pandemic was equal to 30 years of pre-pandemic growth."

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021

Leaders must do more to increase confidence in the security practice

Importance may not correspond to confidence

As part of our research process for the 2023 Security Priorities Report, we analyzed results from the Info-Tech Research Group diagnostics. This report details what we see in our clients' perceived importance of security and their confidence in existing security practices.

Cybersecurity importance

Cybersecurity importance areas

Confidence in cybersecurity practice

Confidence in cybersecurity practice areas

Diagnostics respondents (N=55) were asked about how important security is to their organization or department. Importance to the overall organization is 2.1 percentage points (pp) higher, but confidence in the organization's overall security is slightly lower (-0.4 pp).

If we break down to security areas, we can see that the most important area, Data Access/Integrity (93.7%), surprisingly has the lowest confidence of the practice: 80.5%. From this data we can conclude that leaders must build a strong cybersecurity workforce to increase confidence in the security practice.

Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

Maintain secure hybrid work plan

Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

Build a strong cybersecurity workforce to increase confidence in the security practice to facilitate hybrid work.

Initiative Description:

• Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.
• Review your security strategy for hybrid work.
• Identify skills gaps that hinder the successful execution of the hybrid work security strategy.
• Use the identified skill gaps to define the technical skill requirements for current and future work roles.
• Conduct a skills assessment on your current workforce to identify employee skill gaps.
• Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource each skill gap.
  

Drivers:

List initiative drivers.

• Employees still prefer to WFH for certain days of the week.
• The investment on WFH during pandemic such as updated network architecture and infrastructure and day-to-day operations.
• Tech companies' huge layoffs, e.g. Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees.

Risks:

List initiative risks and impacts.

• Unskilled workers lacking certificates or years of experience who are trained and become skilled workers then quit or are hijacked by competitors.
• Organizational and cultural changes cause friction with work-life balance.
• Increased attack surface of remote/hybrid workforce.

Benefits:

List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

• Increase perceived productivity by employees and increase retention.
• Increase job satisfaction and work-life balance.
• Hiring talent that has been laid off who are difficult to acquire in normal conditions.

Related Info-Tech Research:

• Close the InfoSec Skills Gap: Develop a Technical Skills Sourcing Plan
• Build an IT Employee Engagement Program
• Build an Information Security Strategy

Recommended Actions

1. Identify skill requirements to maintain secure hybrid work

Review your security strategy for hybrid work.

Determine the skill needs of your security strategy.

2. Identify skill gaps

Identify skills gaps that hinder the successful execution of the hybrid work security strategy.

Use the identified skill gaps to define the technical skill requirements for work roles.

3. Decide whether to build or buy skills

Conduct a skills assessment on your current workforce to identify employee skill gaps.

Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource each skill gap.

Source: Close the InfoSec Skills Gap: Develop a Technical Skills Sourcing Plan, Info-Tech

Secure Organization Modernization

PRIORITY 02

• TRENDS SUGGEST MODERNIZATION SUCH AS DIGITAL
  TRANSFORMATION TO THE CLOUD, OPERATIONAL TECHNOLOGY (OT),
  AND THE INTERNET OF THINGS (IOT) IS RISING; ADDRESSING THE RISK
  OF CONVERGING ENVIRONMENTS CAN NO LONGER BE DEFERRED.

Executive summary

From computerized milk-handling systems in Wisconsin farms, to automated railway systems in Europe, to Ausgrid's Distribution Network Management System (DNMS) in Australia, to smart cities and beyond; system modernization poses unique challenges to cybersecurity.

The threats can be safety, such as the trains stopped in Denmark during the last weekend of October 2022 for several hours due to an attack on a third-party IT service provider; economics, such as a cream cheese production shutdown that occurred at the peak of cream cheese demand in October 2021 due to hackers compromising a large cheese manufacturer's plants and distribution centers; and reliability, such as the significant loss of communication for the Ukrainian military, which relied on Viasat's services.

Despite all the cybersecurity risks, organizations continue modernization plans due to the long-term overall benefits.

Current situation

• Pressure of operational excellence: Competitive markets cannot keep pace with demand without modernization. For example, in automated milking systems, the labor time saved from milking can be used to focus on other essential tasks such as the decision-making process.
• Technology offerings: Technologies are available and affordable such as automated equipment, versatile communication systems, high-performance human machine interaction (HMI), IIoT/Edge integration, and big data analytics.
• Higher risks of cyberattacks: Modernization enlarges attack surfaces, which are not only cyber but also physical systems. Most incidents indicate that attackers gained access through the IT network, which was followed by infiltration into OT networks.

IIoT market size is USD 323.62 billion in 2022 and projected to be around USD 1 trillion in 2028.

Source: Statista,
March 2022

Modernization brings new opportunities and new threats

Higher risks of cyberattacks on Industrial Control System (ICS)

Target: Australian sewage plant. Method: Insider attack. Impact: 265,000 gallons of untreated sewage released.	Target: Middle East energy companies. Method: Shamoon. Impact: Overwritten Windows-based systems files.	Target: German Steel Mill Method: Spear-phishing Impact: Blast furnace control shutdown failure.	Target: Middle East Safety Instrumented System (SIS). Method: TRISIS/TRITON. Impact: Modified safety system ladder logic.	Target: Viasat's KA-SAT Network. Method: AcidRain. Impact: Significant loss of communication for the Ukrainian military, which relied on Viasat's services.
Target: Marconi wireless telegraphs presentation. Method: Morse code. Impact: Fake message sent "Rats, rats, rats, rats. There was a young fellow of Italy, Who diddled the public quite prettily."	Target: Iranian uranium enrichment plant. Method: Stuxnet. Impact: Compromised programmable logic controllers (PLCs).	Target: ICS supply chain. Method: Havex. Impact: Remote Access Trojan (RAT) collected information and uploaded data to command-and-control (C&C) servers.	Target: Ukraine power grid. Method: BlackEnergy. Impact: Manipulation of HMI View causing 1-6 hour power outages for 230,000 consumers.	Target: Colonial Pipeline. Method: DarkSide ransomware. Impact: Compromised billing infrastructure halted the pipeline operation.

Sources:

• DOE, 2018
• CSIS, 2022
• MIT Technology Review, 2022

Info-Tech Insight

Most OT incidents start with attacks against IT networks and then move laterally into the OT environment. Therefore, converging IT and OT security will help protect the entire organization.

Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

Secure organization modernization

Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

The systems (OT, IT, IIoT) are evolving now – ensure your security plan has you covered.

Initiative Description:

• Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.
• Identify the drivers to align with your organization's business objectives.
• Build your case by leveraging a cost-benefit analysis and update your security strategy.
• Identify people, process, and technology gaps that hinder the modernization security strategy.
• Use the identified skill gaps to update risks, policies and procedures, IR, DR, and BCP.
• Evaluate and enable modernization technology top focus areas and refine security processes.
• Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to fill the security workforce gap.

Drivers:

List initiative drivers.

• Pressure of operational excellence
• Technology offerings
• Higher risks of cyberattacks

Risks:

List initiative risks and impacts.

• Complex systems with many components to implement and manage require diligent change management.
• Organizational and cultural changes cause friction between humans and machines.
• Increased attack surface of cyber and physical systems.

Benefits:

List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

• Improve service reliability through continuous and real-time operation.
• Enhance efficiency through operations visibility and transparency.
• Gain cost savings and efficiency to automate operations of complex and large equipment and instrumentations.

Related Info-Tech Research:

• Industrial Control System (ICS) Modernization: Unlock the Value of Automation in Utilities
• Secure IT-OT Convergence
• Build an Information Security Strategy

Recommended Actions

1. Identify modernization business cases to secure

Identify the drivers to align with your organization's business objectives.

Build your case by leveraging a cost-benefit analysis, and update your security strategy.

2. Identify gaps

Identify people, process, and technology gaps that hinder the modernization
security strategy.

Use the identified skill gaps to update risks, policies and procedures, IR, DR, and BCP.

3. Decide whether to build or buy capabilities

Evaluate and enable modernization technology top focus areas and refine
security processes.

Decide whether to train, hire, contract, or outsource to fill the security workforce gap.

Sources:

Industrial Control System (ICS) Modernization: Unlock the Value of Automation in Utilities, Info-Tech

Secure IT-OT Convergence, Info-Tech

Develop a cost-benefit analysis

Identify a modernization business case for security.

An example of a cost-benefit analysis for ICS modernization

Sources:

Industrial Control System (ICS) Modernization: Unlock the Value of Automation in Utilities, Info-Tech

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2021

IT-OT convergence demands new security approach and solutions

Identify gaps

Attack Vectors

IT

• User's compromised credentials
• User's access device, e.g. laptop, smartphone
• Access method, e.g. denial-of-service to modem, session hijacking, bad data injection

OT

• Site operations, e.g. SCADA server, engineering workstation, historian
• Controls, e.g. SCADA Client, HMI, PLCs, RTUs
• Process devices, e.g. sensors, actuators, field devices

Defense Strategies

• Limit exposure of system information
• Identify and secure remote access points
• Restrict tools and scripts
• Conduct regular security audits
• Implement a dynamic network environment

(Control System Defense: Know the Opponent, CISA)

An example of a high-level architecture of an electric utility's control system and its interaction with IT systems.

Source: ISA-99, 2007

RESPOND TO REGULATORY CHANGES

PRIORITY 03

• GOVERNMENT-ENACTED POLICY CHANGES AND INDUSTRY REGULATORY CHANGES COULD BE A COMPLIANCE BURDEN … OR PREVENT YOUR NEXT SECURITY INCIDENT.

Executive summary

Background

Government-enacted regulatory changes are occurring at an ever-increasing rate these days. As one example, on November 10, 2022, the EU Parliament introduced two EU cybersecurity laws: the Network and Information Security (NIS2) Directive (applicable to organizations located within the EU and organizations outside the EU that are essential within an EU country) and the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). There are also industry regulatory changes such as PCI DSS v4.0 for the payment sector and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) for Bulk Electric Systems (BES).

Organizations should use regulatory changes as a means to improve security practices, instead of treating them as a compliance burden. As said by lead member of EU Parliament Bart Groothuis on NIS2, "This European directive is going to help around 160,000 entities tighten their grip on security […] It will also enable information sharing with the private sector and partners around the world. If we are being attacked on an industrial scale, we need to respond on an industrial scale."

Current situation

Stricter requirements and reporting: Regulations such as NIS2 include provisions for incident response, supply chain security, and encryption and vulnerability disclosure and set tighter cybersecurity obligations for risk management reporting obligations.

Broader sectors: For example, the original NIS directive covers 19 sectors such as Healthcare, Digital Infrastructure, Transport, and Energy. Meanwhile, the new NIS2 directive increases to 35 sectors by adding other sectors such as providers of public electronic communications networks or services, manufacturing of certain critical products (e.g. pharmaceuticals), food, and digital services.

High sanctions for violations: For example, Digital Services Act (DSA) includes fines of up to 6% of global turnover and a ban on operating in the EU single market in case of repeated serious breaches.

Approximately 100 cross-border data flow regulations exist in 2022.

Source: McKinsey, 2022

Stricter requirements for payments

Obligation changes to keep up with emerging threats and technologies

An example of new requirements for PCI DSS v4.0

Source: Prepare for PCI DSS v4.0, Info-Tech

Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

Respond to regulatory changes

Provide a brief value statement for the initiative.

The compliance obligations are evolving – ensure your security plan has you covered.

Initiative Description:

Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.

• Identify relevant security and privacy compliance and conformance levels.
• Identify gaps for updated obligations, and map obligations into control framework.
• Review, update, and implement policies and strategy.
• Develop compliance exception process and forms.
• Develop test scripts.
• Track status and exceptions

Drivers:

List initiative drivers.

• Pressure of new regulations
• Governance, risk & compliance (GRC) tool offerings
• High administrative or criminal penalties of non-compliance

Risks:

List initiative risks and impacts.

• Complex structures and a great number of compliance requirements
• Restricted budget and lack of skilled workforce for organizations such as local municipalities and small or medium organizations compared to private counterparts
• Personal liability for some regulations for non-compliance

Benefits:

List initiative benefits and align to business benefits or benefits for the stakeholder groups that it impacts.

• Reduces compliance risk.
• Reduces complexity within the control environment by using a single framework to align multiple compliance regimes.
• Reduces costs and efforts related to managing IT audits through planning and preparation.

Related Info-Tech Research:

• Build a Security Compliance Program
• Prepare for PCI DSS v4.0
• Build an Information Security Strategy

Recommended Actions

1. Identify compliance obligations

Identify relevant security and privacy obligations and conformance levels.

Identify gaps for updated obligations, and map obligations into control framework.

2. Implement compliance strategy

Review, update, and implement policies and strategy.

Develop compliance exception process.

3. Track and report

Develop test scripts to check your remediations to ensure they are effective.

Track and report status and exceptions.

Sources: Build a Security Compliance Program and Prepare for PCI DSS v4.0, Info-Tech

Identify relevant security and privacy compliance obligations

Identify obligations

An example of security and privacy compliance obligations

How much does it cost to become compliant?

• It is important to understand the various frameworks and to adhere to the appropriate compliance obligations.
• Many factors influence the cost of compliance, such as the size of organization, the size of network, and current security readiness.
• To manage compliance obligations, it is important to use a platform that not only performs internal and external monitoring but also provides third-party vendors (if applicable) with visibility into potential threats in their organization.

Adopt Next-Generation Cybersecurity Technologies

PRIORITY 04

• GOVERNMENTS AND HACKERS ARE RECOGNIZING THE IMPORTANCE OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES, SUCH AS ZERO TRUST ARCHITECTURE AND AI-BASED CYBERSECURITY. SO SHOULD YOUR ORGANIZATION.

Executive summary

Background

The cat and mouse game between threat actors and defenders is continuing. The looming question "can defenders do better?" has been answered with rapid development of technology. This includes the automation of threat analysis (signature-based, specification-based, anomaly-based, flow-based, content-based, sandboxing) not only on IT but also on other relevant environments, e.g. IoT, IIoT, and OT based on AI/ML.

More fundamental approaches such as post-quantum cryptography and zero trust (ZT) are also emerging.
ZT is a principle, a model, and also an architecture focused on resource protection by always verifying transactions using the least privilege principle. Hopefully in 2023, ZT will be more practical and not just a vendor marketing buzzword.

Next-gen cybersecurity technologies alone are not a silver bullet. A combination of skilled talent, useful data, and best practices will give a competitive advantage. The key concepts are explainable, transparent, and trustworthy. Furthermore, regulation often faces challenges to keep up with next-gen cybersecurity technologies, especially with the implications and risks of adoption, which may not always be explicit.

Current situation

ZT: Performing an accurate assessment of readiness and benefits to adopt ZT can be difficult due to ZT's many components. Thus, an organization needs to develop a ZT roadmap that aligns with organizational goals and focuses on access to data, assets, applications, and services; don't select solutions or vendors too early.

Post-quantum cryptography: Current cryptographic applications, such as RSA for PKI, rely on factorization. However, algorithms such as Shor's show quantum speedup for factorization, which can break current crypto when sufficient quantum computing devices are available. Thus, threat actors can intercept current encrypted information and store it to decrypt in the future.

AI-based threat management: AI helps in analyzing and correlating data extremely fast compared to humans. Millions of telemetries, malware samples, raw events, and vulnerability data feed into the AI system, which humans cannot process manually. Furthermore, AI does not get tired in processing this big data, thus avoiding human error and negligence.

Data breach mitigation cost without AI: USD 6.20 million; and with AI: USD 3.15 million

Source: IBM, 2022

Traditional security is not working

Alert Fatigue

Too many false alarms and too many events to process. Evolving threat landscapes waste your analysts' valuable time on mundane tasks, such as evidence collection. Meanwhile, only limited time is spared for decisions and conclusions, which results in the fear of missing an incident and alert fatigue.

Lack of Insight

To report progress, clear metrics are needed. However, cybersecurity still lacks in this area as the system itself is complex and some systems work in silos. Furthermore, lessons learned are not yet distilled into insights for improving future accuracy.

Lack of Visibility

System integration is required to create consistent workflows across the organization and to ensure complete visibility of the threat landscape, risks, and assets. Also, the convergence of OT, IoT, and IT enhances this challenge.

Source: IBM Security Intelligence, 2020

A business case for AI-based cybersecurity

Threat management

Prevention

Risk scores are generated by machine learning based on variables such as behavioral patterns and geolocation. Zero trust architecture is combined with machine learning. Asset management leverages visibility using machine learning. Comply with regulations by improving discovery, classification, and protection of data using machine learning. Data security and data privacy services use machine learning for data discovery.

Detection

AI, advanced machine learning, and static approaches, such as code file analysis, combine to automatically detect and analyze threats and prevent threats from spreading, assisted by threat intelligence.

Response

AI helps in orchestrating security technologies for organizations to reduce the number of security agents installed, which may not talk to each other or, worse, may conflict with each other.

Recovery

AI continuously tunes based on lessons learned, such as creating security policies for improving future accuracy. AI also does not get fatigue, and it assists humans in a faster recovery.

AI has been around since the 1940s, but why is it only gaining traction now? Because supporting technologies are only now available, including faster GPUs for complex computations and cheaper storage for massive volumes of data.

Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

Adopt next-gen cybersecurity technologies

Use this template to explain the priorities you need your stakeholders to know about.

Develop a practical roadmap that shows the business value of next-gen cybersecurity technologies investment.

Initiative Description:

Description must include what organization will undertake to complete the initiative.

• Identify the stakeholders who will be affected by the next-gen cybersecurity technologies implementation and define responsibilities based on skillsets and the degree of support.
• Adopt well-established data governance practices for cross-functional teams.
• Conduct a maturity assessment of key processes and highlight interdependencies.
• Develop a baseline and periodically review risks, policies and procedures, and business plan.
• Develop a roadmap and deploy next-gen cybersecurity architecture and controls step by step, working with trusted technology partners.
• Monitor metrics on effectiveness and efficiency.