Trust is the measure of a relationship and we unlock the code that enables trust to flourish in an organisation. The code is: "VITAR" ^TM:

• Value Proposition - Stating what's important to your audience and how you can help
• Influence - Understanding how to influence through communication techniques
• Trust - Building credibility and empathy, managing ego to then manage politics
• Alignment - ensuring values, principles and understanding are "on the same page"
• Relationships - managing the portfolio, managing stakeholder expectations and coming up with a relationship plan for your value proposition.

We believe the potential to steer a clear path and avoid the common obstacles to progress lies within you and your team.

That path is "DAMAC" ^TM :

• Define Benefit. What's in it for them? Whatever you do, there has to be payback for the recipient of the service, project or idea.

• Align Outcomes to activities: Ensures that you answer the question "Are we doing the right activities?"

• Measure Outcomes: The critical ingredient that tests whether we deliver value in concrete terms and hold ALL stakeholders to account.

• Analyse Root Cause. Rather than attributing blame, let's focus on WHY there is a gap between what's measured and expected.

• Continuous Improvement. Put in place interventions that stop the problem from occurring again.

Seeking alignment and direction with your business peers on the opportunity that Technology can bring means a fundamental shift in mindset and approach. Think "Create, Innovate and Communicate" when you have a strategic opportunity:

• Create: Define a corporate strategy with basic market analysis, focusing on the values and vision of the company.

• Innovate: Practice prototyping. Understand how to provide insight to inform business peers. Be introduced to minimum viable products and business models. Track lessons learnt as a means to innovate.

• Communicate: Understand the power of Capability models and practice their creation. Define a roadmap that represents your team's long term plan. Create a strategic plan that you can use to align with other departments.

We take a lifecycle view. We recognise that throughput, from conception of the value proposition to delivery and then retirement, is a key source of credibility for the organisation and Portfolio Management. 

To reduce the leakage of ideas, products and projects both into and out of the roadmap, we reference along the lifecycle the strategic intent of the organisation to ensure that there is continuous alignment and value generated.

Fundamentally, Portfolio Management has two questions to answer- do we have a balanced portfolio of activity, and secondly what activity shall we take to the next stage? We divide this lifecycle into five stages:

• Innovate Approach: Driving lessons learnt, failed(!) experiments, successful proof of concepts, validated business models and minimum viable products.

• Feasibility approach:  Reviewing scalable implementation pilots, defining business cases and doing impact assessments.

• Programme Approach: Delivering Products,  Programmes and Projects according to ROI and risk according to information presented in business cases.

• Operational approach: Optimising a return on investment through continuous improvement and managing expectations.

• Decommissioning approach: assessing whether products or services still deliver value and selecting those services that are candidates for decommissioning, to restart the cycle again. 

To enable this lifecycle view we need to implement:

• Governance: enabling effective executive decision making

• Demand Management: marshalling, triaging and prioritising competing requests for resources.

Typically, the missing part of the digital plan is a focus on people, such as: understanding how they will work in the future; solliciting support; ensuring that they are consulted; helping people accept and embrace change. Apply our framework "TEDET" to promote a successful outcome:

• Target - Target the problem to solve by finding the pain point in your organisation that everyone can identify with. Use our assessments to review the level of maturity and skill.

• Envision - Envision how people will work differently in the future. Create "tuned" messages for all people on what's in it for them. Look at what start and stops in a role.

• Deploy - Deploy change into the organisation through assessing the impact on people's way of working. Identify those people in the organisation who will make change happen and come up with an engagement strategy to persuade.

• Embed - Embed change in the organisation through understanding how people react to change and build in activities that will sustain the change long term.

• Troubleshoot - Troubleshoot common ways that a transformation gets derailed and create a plan that includes the extra activities to achieve success!