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Planview Customer Success Center

Outcome Realization

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Outcome Realization

The Outcome Realization capability supports the realization of outcomes within an organization, or deliverables such as products, services, technologies, or applications. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.

Definition and Business Outcomes

Definition

Allows the organization to manage the outcomes that will realize their strategic objectives. Outcomes are defined as any deliverable the organization’s programs and work create, enhance, and support. Deliverables include products, services, technologies, and applications.

Business Outcome

We can define, describe, and categorize the outcomes required by our organization to realize our strategic plan.

Business Outcome

We can estimate the costs, benefits and revenue associated with each outcome.

Business Outcome

We can define a roadmap for realization of the outcome, in terms of the planned dates for delivery of the outcome.

Business Outcome

We can monitor delivery of the outcome, comparing to the baseline and taking actions to bring delivery back on track.

Business Outcome

We can monitor and manage the costs of delivery of our outcomes (including keep the lights on or operational costs) and the revenue and benefits that the outcome is forecasted to deliver.

Best Practices

Ensure data is accurate

Accurate, timely, and easily accessible data is critical for leaders across every organization. Pull relevant data using onboard reporting and dashboards to keep leaders informed and drive strategic decision-making.

Standardize product evaluations

Build a concise and objective set of criteria used to rank and evaluate the product portfolio to ease the difficulty of prioritizing products. Standardizing this process will increase efficiency and velocity by removing guesswork and lessen tension from products that are not approved.

Align budgets to outcomes

Link funding to business outcomes so that the end-to-end delivery of your products can be managed more effectively and flexibly. This encourages greater flexibility and autonomy within your value streams, teams, and teams of teams.

Use guardrails for spending

Create a bounded process for funding to ensure that the right investments are made within each budget while giving teams the freedom to weigh new opportunities against long-term strategies. Set in place guardrails that define spending policies, guidelines, capacity, and practices across the portfolio.

Budget collaboratively

Involve stakeholders and business owners in the budgeting process to create a more informed and effective system for distributing investments. Participatory budgeting encourages leaders to share resources to achieve results within their initiative.

Reassess budgets often

Review your budget regularly to analyze investments across the portfolio and reallocate funds to new initiatives. Continuously monitoring your portfolio enables you to pivot toward new opportunities or away from unsatisfactory projects with greater flexibility and ease.

Remain flexible

Be willing to pivot and reprioritize work as conditions change. With constantly evolving markets and customer demands, adaptability is no longer a nice-to-have. Leaders must continually evaluate, using objective criteria, and adjust accordingly.

Stay on strategy

Use modern tools to keep your outcomes in line with organizational objectives. Staying aligned to strategy is one of the biggest difficulties you will face as a product or portfolio manager, so leverage technology and aggressive prioritization to monitor alignment, adjusting where necessary.

Processes and Reports

conceptual image_outcome realization.jpg

Outcome realization allows organizations to realize their strategic objectives by managing and tracking the costs and delivery of their outcomes using roadmaps and objectives and key results (OKRs). Outcomes can include products, services, applications, or any deliverable the organization creates, enhances, and supports. Outcome realization can support the creation of a financial plan and outcome roadmap that is baselined then used for comparison to track progress toward key organizational goals.

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Outcome Realization Process Steps

           

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Outcome realization initial planning process flow

Process Step Description

Create outcome

Outcomes in Planview Portfolios are the deliverables of your investments (such as, projects and programs). These deliverables are typically products, applications, and services.

See Getting Started - Outcomes for more detail on Outcomes.

For more information on creating outcomes, see Creating an Outcome. 

Describe and categorize outcome

Creating a new product will likely include the population of a small amount of (configuration-specific data points) for the description and categorization attributes as determined by the data and information needs of the organization.

Create initial outcome financial plan

The purpose of this step is to capture a high-level estimate of the outcome costs and benefits/revenue in the financial planning detail screen.

Additionally, financial data can be rolled up from work to strategy or from work and strategy to outcome. See Editing a Financial Plan for more information.

Baseline outcome financial plan

Following the input or roll up of financial planning budgeting and target data, a financial baseline should be taken of the product financial plan in order to compare and track variances on the product financials through time.

Create outcome roadmap

The Outcome Roadmap helps you plan and communicate the launching of outcomes.

The outcome roadmap graphically represents the outcome schedule, stages, milestones, and releases, along with associated programs and allocated work.

This step covers the basics of setting up and managing an Outcome Roadmap. See Outcome Roadmap, Showing or Hiding Elements of the Outcome Roadmap, and Changing the Timescale of the Outcome Roadmap's Timeline. 

Baseline outcome roadmap

This step covers capturing a roadmap baseline to use in a comparison exercise to track the variance at a later date in the outcomes lifespan. The purpose of this step is to use the information provided to make well informed decisions about your outcome portfolio, and to make any appropriate corrective actions as required.

See Outcome Baselines and Saving a Baseline of All Outcomes in a Portfolio. 

Teams execute/deliver on work

Teams deliver on their assigned work. See Project Team Delivery and Agile Team Delivery capabilities for further information.

                   

           

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Outcome realization ongoing management process flow

 

Process Step Description

Roll up outcome financials

The purpose of this step is to summarize outcome costs and benefits to date by rolling up financial planning data from associated work and strategy entities.

See Rolling Up Child Values in a Financial Plan for more information. 

Review financials against baseline

Financial baseline information can be used for comparison with the current plan. The purpose of this step is to monitor the realization of the product financials via a comparison against the baseline in order to track any variance. Users should harness this information to make well informed decisions on the portfolio of products and/or to make any appropriate corrective actions.

See Comparing Versions of Financial Plans for more information. 

Manage ongoing outcome financials

As outcome financials continue to be monitored and compared against the baseline, both actual and forecast information can be managed going forward by the appropriate outcome manager. 

For more information, see Editing a Financial Plan and Managing a Financial Plan

Project/program dates updated

As programs and projects are executed and work is delivered; status, progress and date information is captured. This information is monitored and managed by the relevant program and project manager but can also be consolidated and viewed on the outcome roadmap. See Outcome Roadmap for more information.

Review roadmap against baseline

The purpose of this step is to show a comparison of the dates stored in an outcome baseline with the current dates of an outcome plan in order to to track any variance that has occurred in dates, milestones, etc. and associated entities.

See Comparing a Baseline's Dates to the Current Dates of an Outcome Plan for more information.

Manage ongoing outcome roadmap

Based on the review against the baseline, the purpose of this step is to make any necessary updates to the outcome roadmap going forward.

See Changing Target Dates of an Outcome or Editing or Deleting Outcome Milestones for more information on managing an ongoing outcome roadmap.

Enhance/retire outcome

This step represents a decision point. Based on the outcome information captured to date and compared against baselines, a decision should be made on whether the outcome should continue to be enhanced and funded or whether it should be retired.

Closure

If an outcome is retired, the status of the outcome should be updated to reflect the status. 

See Reviewing or Modifying an Outcome's Details for how to change the outcome status.

           

           

Outcome Realization Process Steps

           

CZ Outcome Realization Process Flow.png

Outcome realization process flow

 

           

Process Step Description

Configure and define the outcome type

Outcomes are items that an organization creates that can be measured and tracked. Outcomes are typically products or product lines like software or retail items, but they could also be learning courses, television shows, or any other type of offering an organization may have.

The first step in outcome realization is to create a place for your outcomes, which must be created by an admin as a custom object. In this step, you will label your outcome type (e.g., products), and add descriptors relevant for managing, measuring, and tracking your outcome.

For more information, see the following articles:

Create, describe, and categorize outcome(s)

Once the outcome type is configured, you will start creating your outcomes. This is an opportunity to ensure that the outcomes are well-defined and categorized for management and tracking. You may also bring in other users, who will be notified via Discussions and/or email.

Create project(s)

Once outcomes have been created and defined, you will create projects that add, effect, update, or remove affected outcomes in order to execute on strategy. These projects will drive the realization of an outcome, such as making a change to a product, increasing the adoption of features, or phasing out a product line.

For more information about setting up projects, See Creating a Project.

Relate project to outcome

 Once projects have been created within Planview AdaptiveWork, they will need to be related to the relevant outcomes, so that projects affecting the outcome to be tracked together. This can be done in the Relations panel of the outcome’s Details view or from the project's Details view.

For more information, see Relating Items.

Continuously manage outcome realization

This step represents the continuous management and tracking of outcomes as related products affect them in order to realize the strategy around the outcomes. This is an organizational feedback loop of reporting, adapting strategy, and executing.

For more information, see the following capabilities:

           

Related Capabilities

Supported Solutions