Our client, mandated to spearhead smart city transformation initiatives within their jurisdictions, required the design of an agile and strategic project portfolio management office to ensure that the smart city projects are strategically selected and that investments are systematically balanced across smart city domains and technology trends. Moreover, our client had to ensure that projects throughput is maximised to cater for the ambitious innovation aspiration and to keep pace with the high-level of smart city transformation demand across the city.

We started by conducting a project portfolio management maturity assessment and consolidating the project portfolio, we then reviewed the current operating model and competencies to identify the strategic gaps and key focus areas.

We then started with constructing the target PMO charter, supported by a centralized operating model with the necessary processes, tools and templates needed embedding agile concepts and product-driven structures.

We also structured the project portfolio and aligned it with our clients strategy, defined strategic programs and mapped them to their strategy’s key performance indicators. We also designed an annual demand planning and governance model to instill a systematic approach towards projects identification, qualification and investment balancing.

To ensure adoption of the new practices, we defined a competency development plan and instilled accountability as part of our clients performance management framework across departments and employees which resulted in an immediate corporate uptake of the new practices and standard ways of working.

As a result of our work our client was able to improve the smart city portfolio throughput and innovate in strategically relevant and impactful initiatives, which impacted quality of life, satisfaction and government innovation. Our client was also nominated among the top 3 innovative project portfolio governance practices globally.