PD-Trak Portfolio Planning and Management

An effective product or project portfolio management (PPM) system is based on selecting new product development projects to achieve the following objectives: 1) maximize the value of the product portfolio, 2) achieve balance (e.g., risk vs. reward, across product lines and business units, etc.), and 3) align projects and products with company strategy.

The PD-Trak product portfolio management software provides tools to:

• Capture ideas for new products and screens these ideas for potential inclusion in the product portfolio.
• Easily develop a preliminary project budget and develop a business to evaluate proposed projects and products.
• Create and rank projects based on different criteria.
• Plan a proposed project or product portfolio.
• Assess the mix, balance and alignment of projects with graphical tools and product roadmaps.
• Determine whether the portfolio can be accomplished within the planned level of resources and financial investment.
• Monitor and manage the project portfolio.

The following flowchart illustrates the portfolio planning process.

 

PD-Trak’s enterprise project portfolio management (PPM) functions can be used to plan multiple portfolios at the business unit level and roll up the business unit portfolios to the enterprise level to further plan, review, and monitor the overall enterprise portfolio of projects. Or this PPM tool can just be used to plan a portfolio of products or projects at the business unit or department level.

These tools are designed to help you develop the strongest possible portfolio plan for the future.  If you were developing the list of target projects for next year, your business planning process would have defined your strategic objectives and your constraints in terms of available funds and resources for project execution.

The next step is to conduct a preliminary investigation of the each product opportunity.  Once the project is defined, a preliminary project budget is developed using a high-level approach to plan project resources.  Next a business case is developed based on estimating sales and establishing a target price and target cost.  PD-Trak provides a robust business case tool that can be configured to address your Finance organization’s methodology.  Results can be based on calculating net profit, gross margin, EBITDA, etc. based on how the system is configured.  This is a multi-currency system to support a global company with projects in different countries.

Project scorecards and financial metrics are used to prioritize and rank projects in this portfolio to maximize value. Product roadmaps and technology roadmaps and portfolio charts are used to achieve balance and to align projects with company strategy.

The final step is to test the portfolio to determine if it can be accomplished with planned resources and also achieves the financial plan in terms of R&D investment and revenue and profit from new products. Future planned resources for the portfolio planning period can be established in the Resource Pool. Based on the resource requirements for the projects in the proposed portfolio, resource planning is run to check that the proposed portfolio of projects is achievable with the planned resources.

Adjustments are made to the portfolio to include or exclude projects, change the timing of projects, adjust the scope of projects and the corresponding resource requirements, changing the development approach (e.g., internal development to ODM, etc.).  Once it is determined that the adjusted portfolio can be accomplished with planned resources, the portfolio is then checked against the business plan for R&D investment, sales and profit from new products.  Adjustments are again made to the portfolio plan and these steps are repeated until a viable plan is developed that best meets the organization’s needs within resource and financial constraints.

PD-Trak project/product portfolio management software functions include:

• The Idea Management function captures ideas for new products and screens these ideas for potential inclusion in the product portfolio.
• Once the preliminary investigation of a new product idea has been performed and a business case developed, project scorecards are used to evaluate the idea.
• The Master Project Schedule is used to select a set of projects for inclusion in the proposed portfolio and provides report on portfolio performance. The project ranking page allows rankings to be developed based on multiple metrics and criteria.
• Graphical portfolio planning tools and product roadmaps are used to assess the mix and balance of projects and alignment with overall product line plans and technology development plans.
• The proposed portfolio can be tested against planned resources, planned R&D investment, and planned revenue and profit for new products.

For further information or a demo, contact Kenneth Crow at DRM Associates
Phone +1 310-377-5569
Email: k.crow@npd-solutions.com