10.1 Laying the Foundation

10.1.1 Assessing Current State

Before you can launch any quick wins, it’s important to understand where you are starting. A basic assessment of your current PPM environment helps you target initiatives that will have the greatest immediate impact and highest feasibility.

1. PPM Readiness Checklist
   • Existing Project Inventory: Gather a list of active projects, including their objectives, estimated costs, timelines, and primary stakeholders. This snapshot will help you see if there are any redundancies, overlaps, or resource conflicts.
   • Governance Structures: Identify if there is a formal or informal governance body (e.g., a steering committee, a PMO). Understand how decisions are currently made and who has the final say on budgets and approvals.
   • Resource Availability: Assess whether your organization has skilled project managers, IT staff, or business analysts who can support these quick wins. If resources are constrained, you may need to start with smaller-scope initiatives.
   • Tooling and Processes: Determine what project management tools (if any) your teams are already using. This can range from spreadsheets and email to more advanced platforms like Jira or MS Project.
   • Cultural Factors: Get a pulse on the organization’s attitude towards change. Are teams typically open to new processes, or is there entrenched resistance?
2. Identifying Key Stakeholders and Sponsors
   • Leadership Engagement: Identify which executives or senior managers have the most influence and who might serve as an executive champion for quick wins.
   • Functional and Cross-Functional Teams: Who will be impacted by your quick-win initiatives? Ensure you include representatives from both technical and business areas.
   • Prioritizing Involvement: Classify stakeholders by their level of interest and degree of influence. This will help you decide where to invest time in communication and relationship-building.
3. Gap Analysis
   • Comparing Current vs. Desired State: Consider the baseline you’ve established and articulate how it differs from your target environment (e.g., limited visibility into project status vs. the desired transparency).
   • Actionable Insights: From this gap analysis, create a short list of focus areas—for example, “Need a basic risk register” or “Improve resource allocation across projects.” These insights will feed directly into your quick-win roadmap.

Why This Matters

Conducting a current state assessment ensures you focus your initial PPM energy on the areas that need the most attention and can yield immediate results. Trying to fix everything at once is typically unrealistic; you’ll gain more traction by zeroing in on specific pain points that are both visible and relatively simple to address.

10.1.2 Setting Clear, Measurable Objectives

Once you have a sense of your starting point, it’s time to define what success looks like. Without clear objectives, even small initiatives can lose direction. Well-defined goals help you align resources and keep stakeholders focused on the expected outcomes.

1. Linking Objectives to Strategy
   • IT and Business Goals: Where possible, frame your quick-win objectives in terms of broader strategic goals—for example, “reduce operational costs by 10%” or “improve customer satisfaction with faster service response.”
   • Communicating Value: When objectives are tied to organizational priorities, you create a compelling story for leadership and frontline teams alike.
2. Developing SMART Objectives
   • Specific: Clearly articulate which process, function, or challenge the quick win will address.
   • Measurable: Define how you will quantify success (e.g., reducing project approval time from three weeks to one week).
   • Achievable: Set goals that are realistic within the scope of a quick-win initiative. Overpromising can erode trust in PPM.
   • Relevant: Align your objectives with strategic imperatives—whether cost reduction, market expansion, or service quality.
   • Time-Bound: Specify the target deadline (e.g., “Complete the pilot in six weeks”).
3. Defining Success Criteria
   • Qualitative vs. Quantitative Metrics: Some objectives might focus on employee satisfaction (measured via surveys), while others might target hard cost savings.
   • KPIs for Quick Wins: Consider metrics like time-to-complete (did we deliver faster?), budget variance (did we stay under budget?), or stakeholder satisfaction (are sponsors happy with the outcome?).

Why This Matters

Clear objectives and success criteria build clarity and ensure that everyone involved understands why the initiative is important. They also pave the way for transparent reporting, which is crucial to demonstrating early wins and gaining broader buy-in.

10.1.3 Building a Lightweight Roadmap

With your baseline and objectives set, you can create a high-level roadmap that outlines the sequence of quick wins and the basic steps to implement them.

1. Prioritizing Quick Wins
   • High Impact vs. Low Complexity: Choose initiatives that can be delivered quickly and visibly improve outcomes. Think about projects that solve a widely-felt pain or free up people’s time.
   • Value vs. Effort Grid: Map potential quick wins on a simple 2×2 grid—high-value/low-effort items typically represent ideal candidates for quick success.
2. Defining Timeframes and Milestones
   • Short-Term Focus (3–6 Months): Plan for immediate activities that can demonstrate impact quickly.
   • Visual Timeline: Use a basic Gantt chart or timeline to illustrate major phases and milestones. This doesn’t have to be elaborate; a simple outline is enough to show stakeholders when they can expect results.
3. Resource and Responsibility Planning
   • Assigning Roles: Clarify who will lead each quick win (e.g., a project manager, a functional lead). Make sure they have enough authority to move the initiative forward without bottlenecks.
   • Supporting Functions: Identify any additional support (financial oversight, IT systems access, communications) that the team may need.
   • Capacity Considerations: Even for small efforts, ensure that teams aren’t overloaded. Overextension can lead to delays and diminished quality.
4. Balancing Flexibility and Structure
   • A Lightweight Approach: Avoid overly detailed plans that create bureaucratic overhead. The goal is to lay out a clear path, not a rigid framework.
   • Room for Adjustments: Since quick wins are often about experimenting, your roadmap should allow for small course corrections if new information arises or stakeholder needs change.

Why This Matters

A lightweight roadmap helps keep everyone aligned and provides a shared understanding of what will be delivered, by when, and by whom. It also sets the stage for more formal portfolio roadmaps as your PPM practice matures.

Summary

Section 10.1 underscores the importance of laying a solid foundation for quick wins. By assessing the current state, setting clear, measurable objectives, and developing a concise roadmap, you establish the direction and focus needed to achieve early success. These preparatory steps ensure that quick wins will be relevant to the organization’s strategic priorities, feasible within existing resource constraints, and visible enough to spark widespread support for ongoing PPM adoption.