E-maginative - Case study: Arval

Implementation of portfolio management and introduction of Prince II as the standard project management methodology

Arval PHH, a subsidiary of BNP Paribas, is a leading fleet management company.

Arvall PHH had a number of business issues it was trying to address:

• Ensure the successful delivery of a number of key business change projects and IT infrastructure projects
• Ensure that only the most suitable projects were undertaken and that best use was made of financial and business resources
• Significantly improve the level of project management within the organisation

e-maginative addressed these issues through a carefully selected programme of change.

Ensuring successfully delivery

e-maginative implemented a set of standard governance principles across the organisation, covering all projects. This included standard reporting, budget management and a single over-arching steering group.

A consistent project management approach was followed for each project and this was underpinned by the implementation of an organisation wide programme management office.

With the programme management office acting as a central hub for project management, governance and reporting the organisation had, for the first time, an up-to-date accurate view of project status. Issues and risks were identified quickly and where remedial action was necessary informed decisions could be made that took account of the wider project portfolio rather than being reactive and singularly focused.

Ensuring the right projects were undertaken

e-maginative implemented an organisation wide process for initiating and managing project delivery. The process covered the entire lifecycle of a project, from inception through to implementation and again was supported by the programme management office.

Using a portfolio management approach any new initiative was assessed against the main principles of portfolio management:-

Fit – the initiative was assessed against a number of criteria including its fit with the organisation's business strategy and if there was an IT element against the IT strategy. Initiatives were also assessed in terms of their fit with other planned or active projects e.g. did they duplicate or conflict with any other important initiative?

Utility - under closer analysis and refinement the initiative was assessed in terms of its usefulness or value to the organisation. This included its business and financial benefit, the level of business commitment, the ability of it to be delivered and its overall level of risk

Balance - any organisation needs to balance its project portfolio in terms of the mixture of delivery and business risk, timescale, resourcing, funding, organisational change and duration. Here the programme management office provided crucial information about current and future initiatives enabling a robust approval and prioritisation process to be operated by the steering group.

Ensuring the right projects were undertaken

e-maginative supported the implementation of PRINCE 2 within the organisation and provided experienced professional support to assist in it. We helped the organisation to embed PRINCE 2 into the business and IT and provided coaching and support to newly trained project managers.

To underpin this we developed a number of PRINCE 2 templates and tools for use by all project managers and ensured that the programme management office took ownership and responsibility for maintaining these.

Core methods employed

• Prince II
• Managing Successful Programmes