project portfolio management

Case Study – Project Portfolio Management Failures – The New Ashgabat Airport

Introduction

On September 17th, 2016 the president of Turkmenistan Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov has officially opened a new US$ 2.3 billion dollar ultra-modern Ashgabat International Airport shaped in a form of a falcon (see video below). The entire complex is comprised of 190 buildings spread on a 1,200-hectare site. The airport is designed to handle up to 17 million passengers (remember that number!) combined with 200,000 tons of cargo every year.

Video:

At the opening ceremony the president claimed that Turkmenistan has “all the opportunities to become a transport bridge facilitating economic cooperation between Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and South Asia.” He also added that the new airport was needed to accommodate a massive influx of tourists eager to visit Turkmenistan.

The official position of Turkmenistan, is understandable since the country’s income have heavily depended on the export of natural gas. As a result of plunging energy prices and foreign currency shortages the government is now forced to develop the tourism and transportation sectors of the economy.

The Problems

There is however an array of problems associated with the new Turkmen initiative. For starters, due to very restrictive visa regulations the country has been visited by anywhere between 7,000 (if you choose to believe World Bank) and 100,000 tourists (if you prefer to rely on official Turkmen government reports). For comparison neighboring Kazakhstan had 4.5 million visitors, while Kyrgyzstan saw more than 2.8 million tourists in 2014.

Here is an additional compilation of facts about Turkmenistan if you are planning to visit that country any time soon:

Article - Should Executives Get Involved in Project Portfolio Management?

 

Another seemingly simple but frequently encountered illusion is that the project portfolio management process can somehow go ahead without the direct involvement of the executive management. Very frequently when teaching my public project portfolio management masterclass I am engaged in the following conversation with at least one of my "students":

 

S: Hi, my name is Pascal, and I am a newly-appointed Director of Portfolio Management at company X. My goals today are to learn as much as possible about practical PPM and implement it once I get back to our headquarters.

Me: Will your executive management participate in the process?

S: No, unfortunately not. They are very busy people, you know ... But they assured me I would have their full support in this undertaking!

Me: So, who is going to create the scoring matrix, balance and strategic alignment models?

S: Hopefully I will do that once I am done with the course.

Me: Understood. Let me paint the following picture for you, and you can tell me at the end whether this sounds as a plausible scenario. You create the scoring matrix, balance and strategic alignment models. At one point of time you are approached by your company's CEO or Senior VP who asks you to add this "very important project" to the organizational portfolio and initiate it as soon as possible. However upon analyzing the proposal, you come back to you boss and tell her that the project will not be going ahead because it scored only five out of the possible 50 points in the prioritization model. What do you think her response will be?

S: She will ask me who created the model!

Me: And once you reply that the model was your creation, what is the likely response?

S: She will probably say something to the effect of that the creation of such models wasn't really in my domain of responsibilities.

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Electric Utility Service Provider

 

Infographic - PPM Model - Electric Utility Service Provider.png

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Electric Transmission Operator

 

Infographic-PPM-Model-Electric-Transmission-Operator.png

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Chemical Products Company

 

Infographic - PPM Model - Chemical Products_1.png

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Construction Materials Manufacturer

 

Infographic - PPM Model - Construction Materials Manufacturer.png

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Article - Should Project Portfolio Models Be Complicated?

 

Let us conduct a psychological experiment. Which formula do you think will yield a more precise and accurate result:

formula1.JPG

or

formula2.JPG

I guarantee that the majority of the readers will select the second formula as the one that would provide the best result. Unfortunately nothing can be further from the truth because any formula is as good as the data going into it. Some of you may have heard the following expression used by statisticians:

Garbage in, garbage out

It basically means that, no matter how complicated the formula is, if you “infuse” it with inaccurate data, the model will produce an inaccurate answer. Having said that take a closer look at the formulas above: the first model only has two ingredients, while the second one has multiple variables. Hence with a larger number of variables we end up with more room for estimation errors.

Why did I start this article with such a strange example? I have recently taught a project portfolio management course in London, UK and the following conversation took place between a Portfolio Manager of a large utility company and your humble servant:

PM: Oh, our executives will never sign up for PPM. We tried it before and it didn’t work

Me: Why didn’t it work?

PM: Well take a look here … (proceeds to show me a very complicated spreadsheet that incorporates not one, not two, but three scoring models for different types of projects at the same company. In order to assess the project proposal one has to answer several dozen questions by selecting appropriate choices from the dropdown menus. Once the choices are made, the spreadsheet “tells” you which scoring model to use. The models are also far from simple; close to a dozen scoring categories with five different potential scores for each variable …)

Me: So, did you use that model?

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Medical Devices Manufacturer

 

Infographic - PPM Model - Medical Devices.png

 

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Electronics Product Company

 

 

Infographic - Project Portfolio Management Model - Electronics Product Company

 

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca

Jamal is an author of two very popular books: Delivering Exceptional Project Results: A Practical Guide to Project Selection, Scoping, Estimation and Management and Project Scope Management: A Practical Guide to Requirements for Engineering, Product, Construction, IT and Enterprise Projects.

Found on the Web - Infographic: Project Management's Impact on Business

 

Some interesting facts:

On Target        

  • 89% of projects at high-performing organizations meet original goals and business intent
  • 34% of projects at low-performing organizations meet original goals and business intent

Building Blocks

  • 71% of projects meet original goals and business intent at organizations that recognize the importance of project management
  • Unfortunately only 38% of organizations place a high priority on creating a project management culture

Down the Drain

  • US$122 million lost for every US$1 billion invested in projects due to poor performance
  • That is a 12% increase from 2015

Project management and Business1.jpeg

PMO

  • Only 49% of organizations have EPMO
  • Of those only 44% are highly aligned with their company strategies (22% of all organizations)
    • They complete 27% more projects successfully
    • 42% fewer projects have scope creep

Project management and Business2.jpeg

About the Author

Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP – president and founder of Thinktank Consulting is an internationally acclaimed expert and speaker in the areas of project/portfolio management, scope definition, process improvement and corporate training. Jamal Moustafaev has done work for private-sector companies and government organizations in Canada, US, Asia, Europe and Middle East.  Read Jamal’s Blog @ www.thinktankconsulting.ca