The Portfolio Command Center is a next generation easy to use state of the art Program/Project & Innovation Management Cloud Solution, a premium Smartsheet extension/add-on.
It allows you to manage a collection of portfolios of projects in Smartsheet.
You define your project blueprints/templates, portfolio reporting, desired parameters, etc., add your approved projects to the intake sheet and the Portfolio Command Center will do the rest.
It will let you create new projects and link them automatically to portfolio reporting. There are built-in predefined templates for several types of projects, for example standard project management template, agile project management template, ITIL implementation project management template, etc., and also with resource management, budget management, meeting management, etc. (see main advantages below).
The Portfolio Command Center has several built-in useful modules, as for example,
An Innovation Management module which allows us to manage complex Innovation Projects with ease.
An ITIL implementation module which allows us to plan and manage a companywide ITIL implementation with built-in tools for service management (Smartsheets).
etc.
You can find more information about these and other modules below!
The most important advantages of the Portfolio Command Center solution compared to other program management solutions are that it is very easy to use (Excel like UI) and very flexible (easily extendable). The main problem with similar solutions is that they are far too complex for the majority of the users. The users will appreciate the simplicity of the Portfolio Command Center solution and will make change management and collaboration a joy in your enterprise.
Furthermore, these are the main advantages of the Portfolio Command Center solution:
Built-in and user defined project templates (standard, Prince2, agile, SAFe, ITIL, PMI, etc.).
Multi-level automatic scheduling with milestones.
Simple Excel like table view, Gantt view, card view (Kanban), etc.
Critical path / bottleneck view.
Schedule, budget, etc., variance management.
Multi-level budget management (planned & actual).
Resource management with overallocation alerts (project, program, company).
Issues and change management.
Risk management.
Quality management.
Lessons learnt & Knowledge management.
Meeting & agenda management.
Multi-location holiday management.
Process automation and automatic alerting.
Document management with versioning.
Collaboration & conversations (per task, per project).
Run anywhere cloud solution (internet application).
Excel like simple user experience.
Mobile application.
SAP integration.
Export to Excel, PDF, etc.
Flexible and easy to use.
Easily extendable based on business needs.
etc.
Use cases
The project management team of a multinational needs to manage and report nearly hundred projects per year. They are using MS Excel for managing the individual projects. It is a manual and difficult process with a lot of non-standard Excel sheets. Portfolio reporting is a regular tedious manual process. By transitioning to the Portfolio Command Center all projects are managed with the same standardized solution and portfolio reporting is fully automatic. Management just needs to visit a secured website and see in real time the progress of all projects.
A telecommunication company has a lot of projects per year, and they are using a project management solution. They need to copy-paste and modify a PM template for each project manually. Portfolio reporting is a manual process. By moving to the Portfolio Command Center there is no manual process anymore, approved projects are deployed and linked to portfolio management, budget actuals are updated from SAP for all projects, etc., automatically.
A construction company has many complex building projects per year. By using the Portfolio Command Center, the construction company can define a complex standardized process for construction projects and deploy the project plan, budget tracking, meeting management, etc., automatically with a real time reporting of all of the projects. When a project is ready it can be archived and can be removed from active portfolio reporting.
An enterprise wants to transition into a modern service organization based on the ITIL principles. By using the Portfolio Command Center with the built-in easy to follow ITIL guidelines and Smartsheet tools for ITIL service management the company is able to realize a smooth transition.
Flexible but with built-in ready to use templates
The Portfolio Command Center automatically generates a project portfolio workspace and reporting based on your choices and with all the necessary sheets for project tracking (schedule & resource management), budget tracking, meeting management, etc. It also automatically generates project and portfolio summaries which can be easily added to a project or portfolio dashboard.
Whether you want a lot of freedom in designing your portfolio management solution or you just want a ready to use solution without the need for a lot of finetuning, the Portfolio Command Center will do the job for you!
Project Management Methodologies
The Portfolio Command Center has built-in support for several project management (PM) methodologies. You can manage projects with any PM methodology you desire (Standard, Agile, Prince2, SAFe, ITIL, PMI, etc.).
Prince2 is one of the most popular project management methodologies. The Prince2 extension has the following extra elements next to the standard project plan, budget, meeting management, etc.:
Project Initiation Document - this is an extensive MS Word template containing a professional Prince2 project initiation document which you can extend. The Project Initiation Document is the combination of the following Prince2 documents:
Business Case
Risk Management
Quality Management
Change Management
Communication Management
Project Organization
Project Plan
Issues Smartsheet (issues and change management)
Risks Smartsheet (risk management)
Quality Smartsheet (quality management)
Lessons Smartsheet (lessons learnt management)
The Project Initiation Document will be added automatically (attached to the project plan) to all new projects together with the issues register, risks register, quality register and lessons learnt log smartsheets. This will make starting your new projects much faster, less work and standardized!
Intelligent Updates
After you have created your projects, then you have the option to update the project blueprint and push the update to all formerly created projects with that specific blueprint.
SAP Bridge
The Portfolio Command Center has a built-in SAP bridge which can be configured to update data in Smartsheet. You can use this to get, for example, budget actuals from SAP into all active projects.
Why is it important to have an appropriate innovation management approach and IT solution? Because they will guide us through all of our innovation tasks with ease. Most of the enterprises struggle with innovation because they do not understand clearly how to structure such an important process and because they cannot involve their employees well in this process. Having simple but intelligent guidelines and easy to use IT tools is the key to managing even the most complex innovation process. And this is exactly what the IIMA and the Portfolio Command Center module provide.
The Portfolio Command Center is a Smartsheet extension for managing a portfolio/program of several related projects. The most logical and simple way of managing innovations is to structure them as innovation projects and this is the reason for the Portfolio Command Center Innovation Management extension module.
The above figure shows how the IIMA works in the Portfolio Command Center Innovation Management module. The whole innovation process is embedded into an Innovation Project. We may have a portfolio/program of several innovation projects in our enterprise.
We may use any standardized project management approach enforced by the Portfolio Command Center (a portfolio/program of a collection of innovation projects). We may also choose the project management methodology (Standard, Agile, Prince2, PMI, etc.).
Problem
The whole innovation process starts with defining the Problem we want to solve with our innovation. Innovation is always an improvement of something and it is vital to define exactly what and why we want to improve. By doing so will help in defining and justifying the innovation. Figuring out what and how to innovate is one thing but convincing senior management about the necessity is another. The Portfolio Command Center’s Innovation Management module helps us collecting all necessary data related to our Problem in a user friendly manner.
Idea
Once we have defined the problem we need ideas for defining how to innovate the product, service or process in a way that the problem can be eliminated. Idea creation is a creative process and we need to collect and prioritize these ideas in a standardized way that we can make the best choices. The Portfolio Command Center’s Innovation Management module helps us collecting and prioritizing our ideas with ease.
Product
Each idea may create one or more products. A product may be a physical product, a service or process. We may define products during workshops, collect them from employees, etc. The Portfolio Command Center’s Innovation Management module helps us defining and prioritizing our products by guiding us through the whole process and by helping us to collect the appropriate data.
Decision
While managing innovations we need to make a lot of decisions, for example, to decide which problem is important, which idea is the best, from which product we benefit the most, etc. To help us making these decisions the IIMA provides two simple tools:
Voting on the options (problems, ideas and products).
Benefit-Importance-Option analyses.
We may combine the information from these tools and from other sources and make the best decisions possible based on intelligent data.
Voting
The Portfolio Command Center includes a simple but powerful voting Smartsheet solution. The users may vote, support or oppose, on the importance of a problem, idea or product. The collected votes are summarized and added to each problem, idea and product for supporting real time decision making.
Benefit-Importance-Option analyses
While deciding on something we usually have several options and we need to decide which option is the best. By using the Benefit-Importance-Option analyses Smartsheet solution in the Portfolio Command Center we can make these decisions faster and in a more intelligent manner.
Reporting
The Portfolio Command Center’s Innovation Management solution has a built-in automatic summary reporting feature which can be used to create our innovation project reports. The innovation project summaries are linked automatically to portfolio level reporting which can, for example, be used to report the status of all innovation projects to higher management.
We can easily extend the solution with any number of Smartsheet Dashboards for reporting purposes.
It is very easy to add Forms to our innovation sheets in Smartsheet. Smartsheet Forms can be used to collect all information in a user friendly and professional manner.
We can easily add automatic reminders to any Smartsheet, for example, we could alert someone automatically to vote on a new idea (when a new idea record is created).
Document Management
We can manage even the most complex collection of documents with the Portfolio Command Center solution. We can add any type of attachment (product prototype images, Word documents with the description of our ideas, Excel sheets with budget calculations, etc.) even with versioning support.
ITIL Service Management
This is an excerpt from the book “Portfolio Command Center, A comprehensive guide to standardized Program/Project Management and Innovation Management with the Smartsheet Toolkit, The Intelligent Enterprise Group, 2022” (each existing and new Portfolio Command Center client receives this book for free).
Introduction
ITIL is a widely used framework of best practices for IT-enabled services. The last version of ITIL, version 4, further generalized these best practices for modern service management. According to the ITIL 4 Foundation “Service management is defined as a set of” IT-enabled “specialized organizational capabilities for enabling value to customers in the form of services”.
There are a lot of publications and IT solutions on the market for ITIL service management, but most of them are difficult to understand and many are just focusing on a few aspects of ITIL service management related to the Service Desk, as for example, Incident and Problem Management, Change Management and Release Management.
This chapter will introduce ITIL, will summarize ITIL service management and will explain how the Portfolio Command Center can help you to easily implement ITIL in your organization. And all of this in a simple manner that everyone could understand. Whether you are new to ITIL or an ITIL expert you will find a lot of useful information in this chapter.
ITIL Service Management Basics
ITIL is a set of best practices or guidelines collected and improved during many years of service management practice by a lot of experts. ITIL is thus not a ready to use methodology which you can apply immediately in your organization. The first step in implementing ITIL is the planning of how you want to apply the ITIL principles in your organization.
ITIL is an Agile framework which we implement step by step, not everything at once, and improve continually. According to the Agile and thus also the ITIL principles we keep things simple, make sure that everything works fine and then gradually extend and improve until we reach the desired state.
Many management practices today incorporate the Agile and Lean principles and ITIL is not different. If you know Lean, then value chain, creating value for the customer, etc. will sound very familiar to you.
The ITIL practices will be useful to any organization whether small or large.
ITIL Service Value System (SVS)
(Source: “Portfolio Command Center, A comprehensive guide to standardized Program/Project Management and Innovation Management with the Smartsheet Toolkit, The Intelligent Enterprise Group, 2022”)
ITIL Management Practices
The ITIL 4 Service Value System contains 14 general management, 17 service management and 3 technical management practices. These are specialized ITIL best practices for different domains.
The ITIL general management and technical management practices form the basis of best practices for doing everything in an ITIL-enabled organization. They are a broad range of management practices which basically let us know what subjects are important in a well-functioning service organization. The ITIL general management practices should not be completely new to organizations because they were adopted from general business management domains. The general management practices form the basis for many of the service management practices.
Remember, ITIL is a collection of best practices that are used as guiding principles while creating our own organization specific ITIL implementation. ITIL is not a ready to use methodology.
ITIL Service Management Practices (Source: “Portfolio Command Center, A comprehensive guide to standardized Program/Project Management and Innovation Management with the Smartsheet Toolkit, The Intelligent Enterprise Group, 2022”)
Portfolio Command Center ITIL Implementation
The following sections will explain in detail how the Portfolio Command Center’s ITIL implementation module helps to plan and implement an ITIL enabled organization. The recommendations explained in the next sections are built-in the Portfolio Command Center in the form of blueprints and ITIL service management tools (Smartsheets). The Portfolio Command Center has a built-in detailed Agile ITIL implementation plan (reusable standardized project blueprint) which you can use to implement your ITIL enabled organization with simple tools and with easy-to-follow guidelines. Since we use Smartsheet we can easily modify all built-in tools and blueprints if needed.
One of the most important principles of ITIL is to keep it simple and progress step by step, this principle is the basis of the Portfolio Command Center’s ITIL implementation. Implementing a state-of-the-art ITIL enabled organization should not be difficult!
… Read more in “Portfolio Command Center, A comprehensive guide to standardized Program/Project Management and Innovation Management with the Smartsheet Toolkit, The Intelligent Enterprise Group, 2022”
Data Sheet
You can download the data sheets for the Portfolio Command Center hereunder:
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The Portfolio Command Center & The Intelligent Innovation Management Approach (IIMA) are Copyright 2022-present, The Intelligent Enterprise Group.
