Facilitating Level 3: Strategic Portfolio Alignment 167
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
STEP 4: UPDATE THE PROJECT PORTFOLIO
AND CAPTURE ACTION ITEMS
After the retrospective session, the PMO leader and coach work together
to document the results and distribute them to team members. Follow- up
meetings with subgroups or individuals may be required in order to take
the actions determined in the meeting and to make adjustments to invest-
ment priorities and the project portfolio. Updates to the following docu-
ments may be required to ensure that the improvements are taken into the
next iteration or time period:
䡲
Action items
䡲
Investment priorities
䡲
The project portfolio (additions, revisions, and cancellations)
䡲
The project dashboard
䡲
Decision- making roles and responsibilities
䡲
The bene ts realization schedule
䡲
Changes to the strategic intent statements
䡲
Other “learning” that the team wants captured in the form of things to
sustain or improve
The PMO leader works with team members to follow up on important
improvements that need to be carried forward, including the decisions
captured in the documents just listed. What matters most is that the team
acts on the outcomes of the retrospective and that its members nd the
experience valuable. Therefore, it is good practice for the coach to facili-
tate feedback on the retrospective process itself, modeling the behavior of
taking feedback and acting on it as appropriate, so that the team feels that
it is being listened to and has an adequate degree of control over the group
process and how it spends its time.
CONCLUSION
The goal of Level 3 of the multi- level learning approach is to provide a
mechanism by which the senior management team can optimize the value
of the organization’s overall project portfolio by selecting and nurturing
168 Implementing Multi-Level Learning
American Management Association
www.amanet.org
the right projects and programs at the right time with the right amount
of resources. Consistent with the principles of multi- level learning, the se-
nior management team re ects on ways to eliminate waste, deliver as fast
as possible, and see the whole, while welcoming new insights, empower-
ing team learning, using a third- party coach, and re ecting at three levels
(project, process, and strategy).
Both the multi- level learning coach and the PMO play crucial roles
in helping the senior team learn and adapt. Together, they improve the
organization’s ability to deliver on its strategic objectives by planning and
conducting regular prospectives and retrospectives to ensure alignment
between strategy and the overall project portfolio.
..................Content has been hidden....................
You can't read the all page of ebook, please click here login for view all page.