Making the connection between strategy, planning and execution with Scientrix
Today’s portfolio managers must balance the need for speed and agility with a desire for quality and precision. Although many companies emphasise strategy and planning, they generally fail at actual execution.
Scientrix provides a unique method of mapping, understanding and managing the strategic portfolio landscapes of an organisation. Through Scientrix, companies can create an overview of all their change projects, establish a connection between projects and the overall strategy and ensure that they are driving the company strategy through execution.
Switch to more sophisticated, outcome-driven tools
Many tools can help organisations manage their project portfolio, but they are often overly complex—imposing rigid governance in a world where things are constantly changing. Usually, organisations struggle to stick to the portfolio because they are action-driven rather than outcome-driven. Merely executing projects does not guarantee that you made a positive impact.
To be more adaptive, agile and client-centric, we need to approach the project portfolio differently. Projects don’t stand on their own. There is much interconnectivity between the strategy and all aspects of the organisation, and you can now make seamless connections with Scientrix.
Increase portfolio value with advanced data, pattern analytics and landscape view
The main issue with standard portfolio management tools is that they use list views that create an outdated tree structure. Imagine you go into a meeting with an executive team where you need to discuss what is happening with your 100+ projects. It can be challenging to tell the story about these projects and how they align with the organisation’s overall strategy.
Instead, a landscape view can tell us which projects are behind, whether we executed them in an agile way and the type of governance we apply. When you look at that project from a bird’s eye view, you can visually connect it to your strategies. You can easily see essential storytelling information that you can communicate to your executive team.
Using colour allows us to see patterns, making it easier to draw overall conclusions. Pattern analytics and visualisation help us tell the story of the tangible value that projects deliver. We can define and track our strategy while checking for sufficiency by rolling up project metrics, aggregating them and displaying them in easy-to-use graphics. Now we can answer the question: does this bring me value?
Manage based on outcomes with Objectives & Key Results
An essential aspect of Scientrix is OKRs, which allow us to manage based on outcomes rather than actions. For example, let’s say we build a website—we are not simply interested in whether the website looks good, but rather if the website gives us x-amount of qualified leads and over what timeframe. In a typical project portfolio environment, the focus is simply on getting tasks done. With Scientrix, we focus more on whether we achieved the desired outcome or benefit. And therefore, we’re not only linking these projects to strategies, but we’re also defining OKRs for them to see if we get to the outcome.
Next, we want to ensure these projects have a quarterly rhythm. Due to ever-changing circumstances, we suggest setting quarterly goals (OKRs) for projects—which, rolled up, can show the progress and status of the whole portfolio. You can now assess how your project progresses, whether some employees are falling behind, and if they are, what can we do to help them? Working on a quarterly target setting rhythm is far more effective and flexible than yearly or three-yearly project plans.
Our value proposition enables organisations to manage their portfolio projects in a far more agile and adaptive way and establish clear connections between their strategy and other essential aspects of their business. We change the way companies analyse and communicate about their portfolio and enable them to provide powerful insights to executives. You can go down as far as the task level in a project and establish what went wrong should the strategy or project fail—was it the strategy, the interpretation or are people not executing or understanding the project well?
Integrate your tool of preference with Scientrix
Although many companies have business intelligence tools that pull data and visualise graphics, you can’t always see it in the context of what you’re trying to achieve in your project. Often, the vital information to that project lies in other systems, making it difficult to bring the worlds together. Companies are unable to connect their projects to their strategy.
If we have this information lying in multiple tools, it’s impossible to see where we went wrong. For that reason, a feedback loop from detailed task execution to strategy is what we need. To provide that information, 99.9% of all cloud-based tools integrate with Scientrix, so you don’t have to give up your tool of preference—we can pull the data from your tools into our system.
So, why choose Scientrix?
Our end-to-end platform will enable you to make a seamless link from portfolios to actions and outcomes. You can understand and assess critical underlying drivers, map and manage initiatives across the portfolio, become laser-focused on high-value outcomes, achieve higher productivity and pivot faster. Leaders will better understand where to play, how to win, which course of action to take and what to prioritise.
Scientrix is all about connectivity—connectivity between different solutions, your strategy, projects, OKRs, other systems and the project portfolio—which will allow you to actualise your company goals, make informed decisions and achieve success.
Are you interested in learning more about the world’s leading adaptive strategy platform and how it can benefit your organisation? Contact us today to schedule a demo!