Flexible Sourcing Model

Flexible sourcing enables an organization to be in a position to respond to work demand just in time.  Many companies struggle with having the right mix of resources and ultimately capacity to satisfy this demand.  They experience challenges balancing permanent employees and contractors with operational and project demand. There are several outsourcing options as mentioned above; your organizational requirements determines the approach best suited for your bottom line. 
Knowing when to outsource can make your company more productive and profitable.  The following criteria should be used in determining when and what to outsource:

- Nonvalue added routine activities/tasks
- Ongoing maintainance
- Temporary or cyclical work
- More cost effective to outsource work
- Work requires highly specialized skill
- Work is not crucial to generating profits or market success.

"There are several outsourcing options – business process outsourcing, managed services, offshoring, hosted services – flexible sourcing has the potential to deliver huge value, particularly when it comes to recruiting skills for short-term projects. Potentially, it allows managers to tap into a global resource of talent as and when needed" David Longworth, March 2008 Webster Buchanan Research

Regina Williams, Author

Scrum from the Trenches: Self Organizing Team

Scrum from the Trenches: Self Organizing Team

Organization Work Prioritization

Many organizations face the challenge of deciding what projects/programs have the highest business value and therefore miss the mark in selecting the right initiatives to deliver at the right time.  One major function of portfolio management is to help organizations make this determination. Having a solid portfolio with ranked and prioritized projects/programs also answers many other questions around resource demand and usage.  IT project prioritization should be based on business strategy rather than spurious cost savings.

IT work prioritization should be a top down approach with 4 levels - Business Strategy, Product Strategy, IT Strategy, and IT projects.  A good example of this is illustrated below:

Business Strategy - Decrease the number of calls into our customer service center therefore reducting the cost of operating our customer service department.

Product Strategy - Partner with our internal IT delivery team and external vendors to add web based and interactive voice response capabilities to service our customers.

IT Strategy - Upgrade software platform that allows for robust performance and integration of enhanced and new features including new portal.

IT Projects - Enhance our existing Web based customer service and IVR applications with functionality to handle additional transactions.

Using this approach ensures focus and delivery of the right product to satisfy the business need.


Regina Williams, Author
Reference: "Prioritizing IT Projects Based on Business Strategy", CIO 7/15/2006

Getting Started

Welcome to PMO Observer.  Our goal is to share valuable information with our readers that will assist them starting, growing, and maturing in the portfolio, project, and program management disciplines.