Change is a given in the current business climate” Kerzner (2010) this change might be due to new technology, economical changes, customer’s/client’s demands…etc. These changes force the organizations to develop and improve their project management system in order to cope with the changes.
In general any change in the system would come with resistance since it is human nature to resist changes and “If you do not change some rooted human behavior on projects, you cannot improve anything because humans lie at the heart of any organization and its systems.” Kendall& Rollins (2003)
Our company was privatized and transferred from the Ministry of Housing, Electricity & Water on 2003, most of our executive managers and lower level managers were working in the ministry hence they still believed on the old project management procedures, and consequently they refused to change it. At that time we needed Project portfolio management in order to provide the company structures and guidelines for identifying, selecting, prioritizing and resourcing projects that are best aligned with the company’s new strategic goals.
Implementation of project portfolio management should be initiated by the top managers, executive and high level managers should be committed to the portfolio management system first and then influence the team to be committed to the system. Executive managers should believe on the portfolio management and realize the importance of implementing such system, they should be certain that this system will add value to the organization.
In my opinion the main key to achieve a successful implementation of PPM in any organization is Collaboration, and according to Rothman (2009) “the biggest barrier to collaborating on the project portfolio is lack of trust “therefore managers should build trust and make their team believe on them, leaders should deliver what they promise to deliver, they should also be constant in their actions and reactions, they should make honesty and transparency a foundation of their work, they should be opened to negotiating and accepting new ideas, and they should trust their capability and their teams capabilities.
In the other hand team members should also trust each other; sometimes we come across people who don’t share information because they feel that keeping data for themselves will secure their careers. We face that a lot in our company some employees and mostly the expert managers and leaders avoid to share their experience and knowledge because they fear that the new incoming engineers would take his position. All the team members should work for the best benefits of the company not for their personal interests.
Project teams should share their work and experience and be transparent with their work progress, so that their colleagues have enough information to make the right decisions. Team work should be a culture in the organization, managers shouldn’t reward individual successes instead they should encourage and award group achievements.
Managers should identify the organization’s strategic goal and define how this goal will be delivered consistently so everyone in the team should focus in achieving a common goal.
