Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects
- As an IT leader, you are responsible for getting new things done while keeping the old things running. These “new things” can come in many forms, e.g. service requests, incidents, and officially sanctioned PMO projects, as well as a category of “unofficial” projects that have been initiated through other channels.
- These unofficial projects get called many things by different organizations (e.g. level 0 projects,BAU projects, non-PMO projects, day-to-day projects), but they all have the similar characteristics: they are smaller and less complex than larger projects or officially sanctioned projects; they are larger and more risky than operational tasks or incidents; and they are focused on the needs of a specific functional unit and tend to stay within those units to get done.
- Because these day-to-day projects are small, emergent, team-specific, operationally vital, yet generally perceived as being strategically unimportant, top-level leadership has a limited understanding of them when they are approving and prioritizing major projects. As a result, they approve projects with no insight into how your team’s capacity is already stretched thin by existing demands.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Senior leadership cannot contrast the priority of things that are undocumented. As an IT leader, you need to ensure day-to-day projects receive the appropriate amount of documentation without drowning your team in a process that the types of project don’t warrant.
- Don’t bleed your project capacity dry by leaving the back door open. When executive oversight took over the strategic portfolio, we assumed they’d resource those projects as a priority. Instead, they focused on “alignment,” “strategic vision,” and “go to market” while failing to secure and defend the resource capacity needed. To focus on the big stuff, you need to sweat the small stuff.
Impact and Result
- Develop a method to consistently identify and triage day-to-day projects across functional teams in a standard and repeatable way.
- Establish a way to balance and prioritize the operational necessity of day-to-day projects against the strategic value of major projects.
- Build a repeatable process to document and report where the time goes across all given pockets of demand your team faces.
Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects Research & Tools
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should put more portfolio management structure around your day-to-day projects, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.Besides the small introduction, subscribers and consulting clients within this management domain have access to:
- Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects – Phases 1-2
1. Uncover your organization’s hidden pockets of day-to-day projects
Define an organizational standard for identifying day-to-day projects and triaging them in relation to other categories of projects.
- Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects – Phase 1: Uncover Your Organization’s Hidden Pockets of Day-to-Day Projects
- Day-to-Day Project Definition Tool
- Day-to-Day Project Supply/Demand Calculator
2. Establish ongoing day-to-day project visibility
Build a process for maintaining reliable day-to-day project supply and demand data.
- Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects – Phase 2: Establish Ongoing Day-to-Day Project Visibility
- Day-to-Day Project Process Document
- Day-to-Day Project Intake and Prioritization Tool
Workshop: Bring Visibility to Your Day-to-Day Projects
Workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
1 Analyze the Current State of Day-to-Day Projects
The Purpose
Assess the current state of project portfolio management and establish a realistic target state for the management of day-to-day projects.
Key Benefits Achieved
Realistic and well-informed workshop goals.
Activities
1.1 Begin with introductions and workshop expectations activity.
1.2 Perform PPM SWOT analysis.
1.3 Assess pain points and analyze root causes.
Outputs
Realistic workshop goals and expectations
PPM SWOT analysis
Root cause analysis
2 Establish Portfolio Baselines for Day-to-Day Projects
The Purpose
Establish a standard set of baselines for day-to-day projects that will help them to be identified and managed in the same way across different functional teams.
Key Benefits Achieved
Standardization of project definitions and project value assessments across different functional teams.
Activities
2.1 Formalize the definition of a day-to-day project and establish project levels.
2.2 Develop a project value scorecard for day-to-day projects.
2.3 Analyze the capacity footprint of day-to-day projects.
Outputs
Project identification matrix
Project value scorecard
A capacity overview to inform baselines
3 Build a Target State Process for Day-to-Day Projects
The Purpose
Establish a target state process for tracking and monitoring day-to-day projects at the portfolio level.
Key Benefits Achieved
Standardization of how day-to-day projects are managed and reported on across different functional teams.
Activities
3.1 Map current state workflows for the intake and resource management practices (small and large projects).
3.2 Perform a right-wrong-missing-confusing analysis.
3.3 Draft a target state process for the initiation of day-to-day projects and for capacity planning.
Outputs
Current state workflows
Right-wrong-missing-confusing analysis
Target state workflows
4 Prepare to Implement Your New Processes
The Purpose
Start to plan the implementation of your new processes for the portfolio management of day-to-day projects.
Key Benefits Achieved
An implementation plan, complete with communication plans, timelines, and goals.
Activities
4.1 Perform a change impact and stakeholder management analysis.
4.2 Perform a start-stop-continue activity.
4.3 Define an implementation roadmap.
Outputs
Change impact and stakeholder analyses
Start-stop-continue retrospective
Implementation roadmap