Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is an Inferior Good

Market-watching these days has become a macabre pass-time; like, why do you torment yourself by looking? Its like watching a train wreck in slow motion.

We have to know how these changes are going to affect us personally, affect our businesses, and affect our ability to invest; and so we watch anyway.

CIO's, executive teams, and department heads all across the world right now are looking at how they can cut costs and still maintain similar levels of productivity. 'Do more with less' is the new global slogan. The market just got a 30% reduction in value, so did your budget - or at least if you haven't gotten that news yet, trust that somebody is talking about that somewhere in your organization.

For a leader to 'Do more with less', he or she needs to know a few things about their organization. Namely, what everybody is doing and what impact that work has on the organization as a whole. Organizations looking to make cuts or tighten up on growth need to do three things better:
* Obtain true visibility over all initiatives and resources
* Prioritize initiatives according to positive impact on the organization
* Make better use of resources

What I love about this is that these needs are addressed through of the discipline of Project and Portfolio Management (PPM). So, why the comment about PPM being an inferior good?

Drawing from knowledge picked up in my BYU economics classes years ago, an 'Inferior Good' is one that people buy more of when they have less money. Right now, people are scrambling to understand their organizations. Good CIO's will realize that PPM is the key to overall productivity gains. This puts PPM in a growth situation; even when the markets are down. We have been seeing this in trends observed over the last six weeks. We have seem a dramatic uptake in product interest as the economy shows further signs of weakening. Our belief is that PPM remains a strong performer in this time of potential global recession.

A couple weeks ago I was in Japan. While there, I spent some time with Jim Hunter of PM Global. PM Global has some great technology dealing with controls management of which, @task is one integrated component. Jim has been in the Project Management industry for many years and commented that he loves down markets due to the increase in PM attention they create and the consequent increase in business.

Furthermore, in the PPM space, there are heavyweight solutions such as MS Project Server, Computer Associates' Clarity, and Oracle's Primavera. These solutions are heavyweight in both up-front cost and resources required for implementation. These solutions tend to focus on the management layer and are complicated to the point that adoption into additional levels of the organization is limited. This limitation directly affects the solution's ability to provide real-time visibility for executives down into the workforce (e.g. If the workforce isn't in the tool, the tool can't provide good data back up the chain without mid-level after-the-fact redaction). These complicated solutions are actually pushing organizations toward alternatives that are less costly up front, less risky to the organization, and more likely to be utilized by the entire workforce.

@task is the SaaS alternative which has its roots in usability and Web 2.0 technology. There is a practical aspect to the needs organizations have around visibility, prioritization, and productivity. Modern tools like @task address this practical need extremely well in a way that promotes usability - so that the organization truly can do more with less... including less complication in their PPM tools.

The combination of down economy pushing organizations toward PPM. That same pressure is pushing PPM buyers toward SaaS applications. This bodes well for products like @task.