Prioritising and planning the work - a specialist insurance company The new head of business transformation quickly recognised

that little information about over 80 IT systems and process improvement projects was available. Most of them didnt have a business case or any benefits defined; projects had been authorised on the basis of the seniority of the person requesting them and who shouts the loudest rather than against strategic objectives or their contribution to the project portfolio. Many individuals were assigned to multiple projects, up to eight to ten each at any one time; in exceptional cases key individuals were expected to manage 17 projects each. Maven identified that the project management, programme management and portfolio management maturity level for the organisation, was between zero and one. We then created a prioritised project portfolio of all initiatives running and known about but not yet started, and started to identify the resource gaps for getting all of the work completed. We then put in place a rigorous governance framework for overall control of all projects and change initiatives. Now everyone involved in projects adopts this new governance framework. There were teething problems as individuals found that they had to work to a framework that suited the needs of the many instead of just their own needs but over the course of a few months this was embedded. Senior management now have a comprehensive view of all initiatives and their authorisation of new initiatives is based on agreed and known business criteria financial, operational, competitive, regulatory and societal. This has reduced the number of false starts where projects were started but then abandoned from 1 in 4 initiatives to less than 3 initiatives in the last year in total.

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