Portfolio management is also critical so we may support our investment decisions, making sure they are totally aligned with our strategy. Together with the strategic- management process, it is helping us to do the right things so we can sustain our operational readiness and relevance in the medium- to long-term.
However, navies also need to do things right, and that is why we started developing new approaches to corporate project management, employing a collaborative tool—Enterprise Project Management (EPM).
The most significant innovations introduced in this field are not so much how we execute our projects, but rather on the integrated way we plan, report, control, and update them.
Nowadays, every time a corporate project needs to be executed, instead of having the several involved departments planning and controlling their tasks individually—resulting in several unsynchronized sub-projects—there is now only one project, managed on EPM and shared among all stakeholders through the navy’s intranet.
This new model has been proved in several interdepartmental projects, from new investment plans to the preparation of ships, staffs, and crews to participate in multinational operations.
The results: Higher quality projects with fewer administrative, material, personnel, financial, or informational deficiencies. That translated to improved force readiness. Additionally, it allowed implementing activity-based costing, which supports our efforts in increasing efficiency. Finally, this model is providing integrated information that is then shared among all Navy departments, creating transparency and accountability.
The experience gained in managing interdepartmental projects drove the Portuguese Navy to develop new applications to effectively link strategic management to day-to-day operations, which was considered quite innovative and is being used by Microsoft and Bright Partners as a case study.
