As paradoxically as it may sound, knowledge is not power anymore! In our modern, ever changing world, you need “Knowing” that gives you true power to manage and monitor your project/product/portfolio as well as the ability to control the situation.

To be in control means knowing what’s happening (the present), knowing what to expect (the future), knowing what to do and having the resources to influence the future.

This type of insight into the performance of your product or portfolio has to be supported by Key Performance Indicators that reflect the true “state of events” and answer your most critical questions.

Key Performance Indicators

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) should also show the progress towards goal achievement. They are very powerful visual tools to highlight process deficiencies (activities conducted), products and services delivered by activity (outputs), and their final results (outcomes). But a lot of organizations are having problems associated with setting up and measuring KPIs that can give them the “Knowing” into their current processes and the future.

But a lot of organizations are having problems associated with setting up and measuring KPIs that can give them the “Knowing” into their current processes and the future.

What are these problems?

The most common problem associated with the portfolio and/project performance monitoring is that the goals and objectives have not been identified; goals are often unclear that makes them unmeasurable; and there is no plan to use the measures to make decisions.

What do you need to do to address these problems?

The first step is to develop clear, measurable goals. Ideally, a strategic plan must show the link between strategic and performance goals. Without clear goals, you can only measure activities and outputs!

The next step is to derive performance measures from these clear strategic and performance goals.

Then, you need to define outcomes that reflect a problem that the project was initiated to solve and measure progress towards achieving these outcomes.

While developing these measures, identify and focus on the few most important questions that need to be answered in order to truly understand the situation.

To ask the right questions you have to build the bridge between strategic planning and performance measurements