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PMO evolution for digital addresses the changes in PPM practices, capabilities and
tools required to support organizations as they mature digitally. This includes
demand prioritization, enterprise transformation and EPMO, PPM tools and solutions,
as well as resource management.
Scope
This initiative encompasses practices and tools required to enable initiative and portfolio management
to maximize portfolio value. As new digital business practices emerge, the PMO role must adapt.
In addition to program and portfolio management leaders and business leaders, other IT roles involved
in this initiative are:
■ Demand prioritization: This provides the mechanisms by which organizations collect and manage
demand, and progress ideas and requests for new initiatives, whether programs, services, projects or
products.
■ Enterprise transformation and EPMO: This enables the establishment of enterprise-level PPM
capabilities to lead and enable business evolution, and to balance portfolio decisions for delivering
strategic value realization.
■ Portfolio management: This optimizes and balances the selection, prioritization and performance or
value of project, program, service, asset and/or product investments in alignment with the
organization’s strategic objectives.
■ PPM tools and solutions: This includes the selection, deployment and management of existing tools
or new disruptive tool platforms that enable stakeholder transparency into program, product, project
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Analysis
Digital business is here to stay. In our 2021 CIO survey, 48% of CIOs reported being digitally mature and
only 2% reported no digital initiative. 1 CEOs were more likely to accelerate their digital initiatives than to
slow them down by a ratio of 5-to-3. 2 The rationale for accelerating digital business during a global
pandemic is clear — beyond enabling organizations to work in new often remote ways, it has proven to
CEOs and boards that the enterprise’s path to the future runs through IT. This demonstrates that senior
management clearly understands the advantages of digital business during turbulent times. As such,
PPM leaders must evolve their function as their organizations advance their digital maturity.
The basis for any project management office (PMO) evolution is a solid foundation. Basic building
blocks such as charters, best-practice policies, a grasp of the stakeholder community, and relationship
management, as well as an overarching leadership vision, must be in place. The initiative for program
and portfolio management leaders addresses these topics.
The sheer increase in the number of digitally mature organizations means PPM leaders must stay aware
of the latest trends, tools and techniques. They must ensure their function has the mindset, practices,
services and supporting technologies relevant for the digital age. As digital business evolves,
organizations must too — learning to continually adapt to an accelerating pace of change. New
technology introductions happen faster. Adaptive methods for technology and business (such as digital
product management and agile) pervade most organizations. The focus of portfolio management can
no longer be isolated to silos of projects, products, applications and services, as previously clear lines of
demarcation between them blur. Business leaders must understand and manage dependencies and
make decisions across new integrated business models.
Topics
To support digital business, PPM leaders must be proactive. New and evolving demands necessitate that
PPM leaders partner with business leaders, finance and resource managers to balance investments
across a diverse set of internal and external initiatives, products and services. To support the digital
journey, PPM leaders must adapt their function to a much faster moving and more complex
environment. They can accomplish this with the appropriate practices, tools, skills and approaches to
meet business goals and priorities and to maximize the value of the portfolio and the potential of
available resources.
Demand Prioritization
Organizations struggle to balance the demand for digital transformation with the need to keep
operations running. Implementing responsive and effective demand channels across a variety of digital
business practices (products, services, programs) will become imperative for managing sustainable
continuous change in the digital era.
Recommended Content
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Planned Research
■ Managing demand channels for better outcomes
■ How does an EPMO transition to a strategy realization office for the enterprise?
Recommended Content
Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
■ Survey Analysis: Follow the Lead of EPMOs in Digitally Mature Organizations to Enhance
Performance
■ PMO as a Change Enabler in Digital Business: How PMOs Can Help Portfolio Decision Makers,
Business Leaders and Employees With Successful Change
Planned Research
■ Transforming the EPMO to support execution of digital strategy
■ Plans and actions to get the strategy realization office up and running
Portfolio Management
With digital business and the proliferation of agile and product constructs, there is a renewed interest in
portfolios and portfolio management. Portfolios are increasing in popularity because they explicitly
address interdependencies across strategic investment priorities and planned business outcomes.
■ How do I integrate and balance across a variety of portfolios that are often different in structure and
objective?
■ What approaches can we adopt to expedite the evolution from a single- to multimethodology
portfolio?
■ How can I enable strategic portfolios that continuously adapt to market changes?
Recommended Content
Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
■ 3 Priorities for the Enterprise Portfolio Management Office During Turbulent Times
Planned Research
■ Survey Analysis: Proven portfolio practices that make a difference
■ What considerations should I account for when selecting the right tool for my PPM needs?
Recommended Content
Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
■ The PPM Market Now Supports Strategic Portfolio Management and Adaptive Project Management
Planned Research
■ Avoiding pitfalls when implementing PPM solutions
Resource Management
Traditional resource management practices have not been sidelined by agile, and now prove to be
foundations to build upon as digital business evolves. PPM leaders must increase their resource
management vigilance as work dynamics shift by transcending coarse-grained resource capacity
planning and by thinking differently to deliver greater productivity to meet digital business demands.
PPM leaders must also extend their expertise to enable talent management, helping with talent
acquisition and development as digital evolves into new domains devoid of surplus talent.
■ How do we evolve resource management practices to enable change in our digital business?
Recommended Content
Some recommended content may not be available as part of your current Gartner subscription.
■ Resource Capacity Planning for PPM Leaders: Crawl Before You Walk
Planned Research
■ Stewarding resource capacity to maximize portfolio delivery
■ How to Select PPM Technologies Suiting Digital Business in a Confusing Market With Porous
Boundaries
■ Interact with Gartner analysts to identify research and Toolkits hand-selected for your unique situation
and to receive in-context advice.
■ Connect with Gartner analysts and peers to learn more at the annual Gartner Program and Portfolio
Management Summit.
Essential Reading
■ Leadership Vision for 2021: Program and Portfolio Management
Evidence
1
The 2021 CIO Agenda: Seize This Opportunity for Digital Business Acceleration
2
2020 Gartner CEO Survey: The Year of Recession
Portfolio and Resource Management for Products and Projects Primer for 2019 - 7 February 2019
Portfolio and Resource Management for Products and Projects Primer for 2019 - 7 February 2019
Evolving Portfolio and Resource Management Primer for 2018 - 1 February 2018
Applying Project Portfolio Management With Scarce Resources to Optimize Business Value Primer for
2017 - 9 January 2017
Applying Project Portfolio Management With Scarce Resources to Optimize Business Value Primer for
2016 - 20 January 2016
Related Priorities
Program and This initiative focuses on functional design and talent strategies to enable PPM leaders
Portfolio to evolve the enterprise’s capabilities in order to successfully deliver digital business
Management outcomes.
Leaders
Application and Gartner’s research for application and product portfolio governance provides best
Product Portfolio practices and insights to help accommodate present and future demand.
Governance
CIO: Strategy, To be fit for digital and composable business, strategy and governance must become
Governance and adaptive and continual, and operating models must become more tightly integrated
Operating Models and agile to accelerate execution.
IT Cost Gartner explores how IT financial management must evolve to create an agile and
Optimization, innovative environment (value), with proper risk trade-offs for better decision making
Finance, Risk and and desired business outcomes.
Value
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