In the previous episode, we talked about the impact of the pipeline on change management. Below you will find pictures of the first pipelines.
The columns represent the status of the different projects. The orange post-it note represents the registered projects. And the yellow post-it note corresponds to projects where a project manager had been appointed…
Same situation on the diagram above. The only difference is in the yellow post-it. It corresponds to the projects where a progress report has been requested in the last 3 months…
In the previous case, the situation is a little more subtle. We can see that the studies column is well filled, then comes the 3rd & 4th. The problem is that there are 7 people in the studies, 1 person to do the whole 3rd column! And about twenty people to do the 4th!
The observation is often the same:
- “It is obvious that there are too many projects!”
- “How do you want us to be focused on the right things with all that we have ?”
- “Not all projects will be successful, that’s for sure! We’d better stop them now.”
- Etc.
In short, the pipeline demonstrates the disorganization of your project portfolio quite easily.
It makes it obvious that you need to find a way to reduce the project pipeline. If you don’t, don’t bother going any further. You will continue to make visible what is wrong without doing anything about it.
So, a real success at this stage, is to admit that you will have to freeze some projects and stop launching new ones until the work-in-progress gets to a reasonable level.
This is what the “frozen projects” column is for.
So how do you freeze projects?
- Do they have an established project plan?
- Do they have clear, shared deliverables?
- Do you have any doubts about their final impact on your result?
- How long has it been since a boss asked you for a status of this project?
Depending on the answers to these questions, this should help you make a first selection.
Now we need to find the resource that regulates the system.
Indeed, it is good to freeze projects or to stop the launch of some of them, but we will have to find a way to unfreeze them.
As we discussed in Episode 1, we’re going to regulate, but how do we find that regulation point?
See Episode 3 to find out more.
