The pipeline way of managing projects

Staying in control of complete portfolio of projects difficult. It is what project organizations struggle with most. That changes when you start managing the project pipelines in stead.

Pipelines are the lineups of projects as they go through the organization. They are the core of every project organization. You can't really see them but they are very real. Where the work is piling up marks the end of a pipeline.

Streamlining the flow within pipelines is proven strategy. It is what Agile, Lean, KANBAN, Theory of Constraints, and Critical Chain Project Management do in a nutshell.

When organizations try to align all the projects individually with an other, and fit everything together, they discover how difficult that is. The dynamics is too chaotic and unpredictable. Project schedules are too complex. That is the reason why projects seem to be on collision course with each other so often. When they lose control of the pipeline, they lose control of the projects. Only a few projects are needed to totally lose control.

This changes when focusing on pipelines.

The great thing of pipelines, is that they behave independent of the details of projects and when exactly people are available. It is the amount of work and the capacity of the pipeline that make how projects drift through the pipeline. This eliminates project schedules and resource planning from the equation. Just three parameters per project, every project manager will be able to tell, determines how projects interact with the pipeline. This sounds abstract, but is something you can do yourself. 

Project pipelines might be your biggest discovery of 2019....

This video gives you an impression how that looks like.

For more, empoweryourprojects.com.