Portfolio Management Simulation

I spent a good part of today in a project portfolio management simulation hosted by Computer Associates.  It was a fun exercise.

CA were naturally doing a promotion for their product Clarity, but it was a soft sell, and most of the energy was around three rounds of project delivery phases.  All the magic buttons were there; resource capacity management, schedules, budgets, risk and uncertainty and value based prioritization.

Of course the simulation ignored many real world factors such as levels of competence, ramp up and switching costs and so on.  But it was just a game and the purpose was to raise points for discussion rather than test or demonstrate real world competencies.

The fun bit for me was that I got to play the role of IT operations, and have to manage the scarce hardware resources and the competing maintenance operations.  Once I worked out what my role was and how to play it in the game I put up all my data on a whiteboard and everyone did the work for me.

Whiteboard beats PPM system (in a room of 10 people at least.)

Thanks CA for a fun day.