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A Worthwhile Quest: Measuring What's Important to Your Business

May 20, 2013 | by Mary Yanocha

A recent Gartner survey on PPM found that the single biggest success criteria was alignment to company strategy.

Metrics continues to be an elusive yet hot topic as evidenced by the crowd that Lars Mieritz drew at this morning’s Gartner PPM & IT Governance Summit session, which was aptly titled “On the Quest for PPM KPIs and Metrics.”

Lars covered a lot of ground during the session, including the key elements for creating meaningful PPM metrics and how best to implement them. Getting the building blocks in place is the first hurdle. These elements include ensuring the data is available and credible, metrics definitions are kept concise, the purpose of the metrics collection is understood, there are resources in place that can obtain and interpret the information, and management is bought into the idea in the first place.

An overriding theme was that one size does not fit all. Lars shared many examples of metrics his clients have used at both the project (focused on execution and operational efficiency) and portfolio levels (focused on strategic alignment and value). While each organization needs to decide upon the specific measures that are most meaningful to their business, pulling these metrics together in a single view and not overcomplicating them with too many details will help improve how stakeholders receive the information. Interestingly, a recent Gartner survey on PPM found that the single biggest success criteria was alignment to company strategy, followed by supporting revenue growth. This finding is consistent with our own PPM research.

Gone are the short-sighted days when just being on time and on budget mattered. Stay focused on the business goals when developing your own KPIs and metrics, keep them simple, and use them as a guide in making sound business decisions.

About the Author

Mary Yanocha

Mary Yanocha leads new business growth initiatives as well as the sales and marketing functions for both PM Solutions and PM College. During her longstanding tenure with the company, she has taken on increasing responsibilities with oversight of functional areas such as communications, IT, and administration, in addition to sales and marketing.

Notable accomplishments include managing the development of innovative thought leadership pieces such as primary research reports, books, white papers, and case studies that help educate the market on project management trends and best practices and articulate the value proposition of the company’s services in substantive ways. She initiated, planned, and led the company’s salesforce.com CRM migration, which has enabled PM Solutions to grow its contact base by 250% since inception. Mary also conceptualized, developed the business case, and led the creative team responsible for launching the company’s first-ever app on the App Store, PMP® Flashcards for Project Management.

You can reach Mary at myanocha@pmsolutions.com.

 

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Mary Yanocha

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