DICE, a tool for executional certainty

I received a mail from the Boston Consulting Group. Among other topics they highlighted their DICE tool to access and set up change initiatives. The DICE framework is a tool originally developed by Perry Keenan, Kathleen Conlon, and Alan Jackson (all current or former Partners at The Boston Consulting Group). By using this DICE tool, BCG claims that you can dramatically improve the odds of success.

In one of my previous posts regarding MoP practices in practice I already made a reference to this tool.

It’s a very simple tool to position your project on the DICE chart. Based on five questions you get an indication if your project is positioned as win, worry or woe. A project in the woe area is structured or guaranteed to fail. The tool gives suggestions for improving your DICE score. And of course it’s much more important to have a conversation about the scores and what you can do about it than only look at the final score itself!

The DICE score (D + 2I + 2C + C₂ + E) is based on:

Duration (D): Either the total duration of short projects, or the time between two milestones on longer projects

Team Performance Integrity (I): The project team’s ability to execute successfully, with specific emphasis on the ability of the project leader

Commitment (C): Levels of support, composed of two factors:

• C₁ visible backing from the sponsor and senior executives for the change
• C₂ support from those who are impacted by the change

Effort (E): How much effort will it require to implement (above and beyond business as usual)

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In the embedded video from Perry Keenan you get an intro to the DICE tool.

If you go to the BCG DICE website you can get access to the DICE calculator, DICE FAQs and a library with the original HBR article The hard side of change management.

You will also find a set of small videos explaining the assessment of the DICE score, Duration, Integrity, Commitment and Effort and the setup of a DICE workshop and the DICE portfolio.

You will also get access to some related documents like:

• A way to access and prioritize your change efforts (new HBR article about the DICE tool)
• Leading change in turbulent times (about emotional turmoil that can drastically undercut the change effort)
• Transformation: The imperative to change (Case studies of transformation excellence)
• Executing Change beyond the PMO (from PMO to SIO: Strategic Initiative Office)
• Strategic initiative management: the PMO imperative (The role of the PMO).

Conclusion: a simple tool, be accompanied by many relevant documents and videos. It is shared by BCG and can be very helpful in assessing your own portfolio and to trigger conversations about the focus in your portfolio and individual interventions for your most important projects!

MoP: Organizational energy

It’s a good start to have your processes in place to accommodate the practices of the portfolio definition and delivery cycles. But you need more. If there is no commitment of senior management it will be a mission impossible to accomplish the portfolio goals.

Your staff must show involvement, looking for new opportunities, new innovations, willing to take decisive actions to solve problems because they want to work for a successful organisation, or in other words they must show productive energy.

MoP describes the energized change culture as one of the principles and sees this organization energy as the linking pin between the two portfolio management cycles. The energy is the “fuel” for change and performance.

Being successful is all about people and in that sense it’s a pity the MoP manual spends just a few pages on this topic. Searching on the Internet gave some interesting presentations and articles from Vogel.

Henley Business School/Vogel defines organizational energy as ‘the extent to which an organization (or division or team) has mobilized its emotional, cognitive and behaviour potential to pursue its goals.’

This article is divided into the following paragraph:

• Intro
• Portfolio management principle 5: Energized change culture
• Organizational energy matrix
• What is the energy state of your company?

To download: MoP (practice Organizational energy, 150515) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP: Portfolio management organization

To implement en maintain portfolio management in your organization you need to have senior managers who are committed to portfolio management. The first step will be the institutionalization of a portfolio board. In line with the P3O and MoP theory we see the following portfolio bodies and teams (see Figure 1: Portfolio management organization):

• Portfolio Direction Group or Investment Committee
• Portfolio Progress Group or Change Delivery Committee
• Portfolio Office (permanent)
• Centre of Excellence

This article is divided into the following paragraph:

• Overview
• Purpose and responsibilities

To download: MoP (practice Organization, 150422) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice 5: Plan. How to create a portfolio plan?

The purpose of the ‘plan’ practice is to collate information from the portfolio definition cycle and create a portfolio strategy and portfolio delivery plan which will be approved by the portfolio direction group/investment committee. Both documents can be combined in a single document (Portfolio strategy and delivery plan). The objectives are to:

• Provide a longer term overview
• Provide clarity to stakeholders
• Motivate people to commit to the delivery of the shared goals
• Convert the balanced portfolio into a plan
• Provide a baseline (the portfolio delivery plan) against which progress can be monitored, reviewed and managed (via a portfolio dashboard).

The portfolio office will normally update the plan on at least an annual basis in close cooperation with the business strategy, finance and performance management functions in your organization to assure that the plan is still aligned with the corporate (mid term) strategic, financial and business plans.

This article is divided into the following paragraph:

• Portfolio delivery plan
• Examples
• Keys to successful planning

To download: MoP (practice 5 Plan, 141128) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice 4: Balance. How to get a balanced portfolio?

The purpose of the ‘balance’ practice is to ensure that the resulting portfolio is balanced in terms of factors such as timing, coverage of all strategic objectives, impact across the business, stage of initiative development, overall risk/return profile, and available resources.

You have to ask yourself if your prioritized list of initiatives (of all categories or segments) is still optimum.

This article is divided into the following paragraphs:

• Factors to take into account if your prioritized list of initiatives is still optimum
• Possible graphical representations to support decision making
• Keys to successful balancing

To download: MoP (practice 4 Balance, 141109) v0.1

This article will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice 1: Understand. How to obtain a clear and transparent view?

The purpose of the ‘understand’ practice is to obtain a clear and transparent view of what is in the current portfolio and the project (initiative) development pipeline, performance to date and, looking forward, the forecast costs, benefits, and risks to delivery and benefits realization.

But you have to be careful with transparency, see e.g. the quote from the Victor Lamme, professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Amsterdam (see article). You could also ask yourself if the transparency is one of the reasons why senior management are sometimes hesitating to implement portfolio management. Do they want to show what change initiatives are there in the pipeline to the whole organization? What does it mean or do with the organization if they are aware of an upcoming reorganization or transformation? On the other hand if there is no transparency, if not all initiatives are clear, it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to build a portfolio that is achievable.

This article is divided into the following paragraphs:

• Collection of the needed and consistent information
• Approaches to obtain initiatives
• Keys to successful understanding

To download: MoP (practice 1 Understand, 141006) v0.1

This post will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice 2: Categorize. How to define groups or segments?

The purpose of the categorize practice is to organize change initiatives into groups, segments or sub-portfolios to make it easier for senior management to understand what initiatives are part of the portfolio and how they will contribute to e.g. the strategic objectives of the organization. It will also help to decide on the balance of the portfolio across the different categories and on the optimum use of available resources (funding, people). Allocation of available resources across the different segments must reflect the strategic alignment of each segment. Each group or segment can have its own investment criteria to appraise and prioritize.

This article is divided into the following paragraphs:

• Reflection on a simple portfolio
• Categories or segments
• Agile development teams
• Building your segmented portfolio
• Keys to successful categorization

To download: MoP (practice 2 Categorize, 140926) v0.1

This post will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice: Prioritize 3. How to build a prioritization model?

The purpose of the prioritize practice is to support senior management, portfolio board or portfolio governance body to answer the following questions:

• Which initiatives are the right projects to invest in?
• What are the most important initiatives?
• What initiatives must be resourced above all other initiatives?

The official MoP manual stated that answering these questions is only possible when all initiatives have been prioritized. This prioritization can be done for the portfolio as a whole or when the portfolio has been divided into several categories or segments, for each category or segment.

In this article I will emphasis on the how. I will look at the approach and will go a step further than the manual to give you more in depth details what you have to do. E.g. the manual stated “Agree the importance of each criterion by assigning a weighting or percentage of relative importance – and ensure that the total percentages of all criteria add up to 100”. Sounds easy, but how can you decide and calculate which weighting or percentage of relative importance you have to use for each criterion?

This article is divided into the following paragraphs:

• Different types of metrics or selection criteria
• Single criterion analysis
• Multi-criteria analysis (MCA)
• Keys to successful prioritization

To download: MoP (practice prioritize, 140908) v0.1

This post will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP Practice: Management control. To OTOBOS or not?

For many years already, the Standish Group describes in their Chaos report about the number of successful and less successful projects. How many projects are delivered On Time, On Budget and On Scope?

Many organizations are using these cpi’s as early warning indicators using RAG (Red, Amber, Green) to express if, e.g. the planning is at risk. Green when everything is running smoothly, Amber when the governance body, the project board, needs to know that problems are encountered but the project manager has options to solve, and Red when the project is off track and the project board has to make a decision. Because it’s an early warning indicator the indicator will switch from amber or red to green when the issue has been solved or a decision has been taken.

On a periodic basis many organizations look at their portfolio and calculate how many projects are at risk and use this information in their performance management systems to show how well they are performing.

Figure 1: Portfolio progress

If you look at figure 1, I could imagine a manager to say “we are doing pretty well with our projects, of course we do have our problems but on average between 10 and 20% of our projects have issues.” Does this sound familiar? In this example there are only two projects that report Amber in the last month, but what does this say? Are we really in control on all the projects? Let’s have a closer look. For initiative a we had some problems in July and as a consequence the end date was postponed. Initiative b is really a project at risk with several problems and the end date was moved more than once. Only initiative c will deliver at the original end date and I has been delivered at the original end date. Thus the manager had to say: “we really have problems with the delivery of our projects, only around 20% of our projects will be delivered On Time.” So if you report on your project portfolio progress it’s good to use the OTOBOS indicators but use the information from the original project portfolio plan as your baseline, and use e.g. changed end dates, to calculate how many of the projects in the portfolio are successful or not.

This post will be used in a new book MoP practices in practice, for portfolio managers who want to embed the MoP theory in their organization. In the coming months several blog posts and articles will be published waiting for your feedback. To see all, select the tag MoP_practices_in_practice.

MoP; The strategic and organizational context at a glance

MoP can be divided into four integrated elements: The strategic and organizational context, Principles, Portfolio Definition Cycle, and Portfolio Delivery Cycle.

Before you go into the details of the portfolio definition and portfolio delivery cycles you must understand how portfolio management links to the following six key functionalities or activities: strategic/business planning, business as usual, budgeting and resource allocation, project and program management, performance management and corporate governance.

The official MoP book addresses the relationship between portfolio management and each key functionality or activity individually.

To help my students in MoP training classes to understand these relationships, I brought these six together. As a result it’s easier to understand why these relationships exists.

If you look at the figure, you start at the top. Strategic/business planning drives on one hand business as usual (Run the business) and sets the basis for the scope of the portfolio (change the business). To make sure everybody will do what is needed to achieve the objectives you need to have performance management in place. KPI’s to support business as usual as well as KPI’s to support the change initiatives. Missing KPI’s will definitely result in failure or problems. Programme and project management are mechanisms to deliver the changes. Portfolio management will deliver the standards, processes, and staff development (Centre of Excellence) and the management of dependencies and overall risk management for the programme and project management function. Budgeting and resource allocation (money, people, equipment, facilities, etc.) will help you to control and to build a portfolio that is manageable and realistic to deliver and to keep the shop open. The results from programme and project management will lead to an adjusted business as usual organization and running the adjusted business organization will result in the realization of forecasted benefits. Behind all these functions you will find corporate governance. The ongoing activity of internal control and portfolio management supports this control by linking the strategy with the portfolio, providing a framework to deliver the portfolio, and creating clarity on roles and responsibilities and progress against plan.

Besides these six key functionalities or activities portfolio management can/will/need to collaborate with other functionalities e.g. communications, IT, finance, procurement, HR, etc.

To download the figure: MoP (Org context, 140711) v1.0