StrategyWorks

Provides clarity and focus

Commentaires : Our rapid growth, opened many routes to market which we were keen to exploit. By working with Shapecast, we were able to plan our portfolio of programmes and projects ensuring they were aligned with our objectives and vision, allowing us to de-prioritise certain programmes with low value and focus our attentions on those that were critical to achieving our key outcomes. When it came to executing the plan, the leadership team had complete visibility over the whole portfolio and could see where and why projects were stalling or tracking behind their timelines. At the same time, our project teams had a clearer understanding of their responsibilities and accountabilities as well as an appreciation of the company vision and the part they played in supporting it.

We now have a fully aligned and joined up activity plan, the outcomes of which will enable us to take full advantage of the global opportunities that will present themselves over the next 12 months leading to a conservative budgeted revenue increase of around 15% on 2017 results.

Avantages :

The visibility, it provides while planning and executing our plans; in particular being able to quickly identify the programmes and projects which were not aligned with our business objectives and key outcomes. What was important for us through the whole process was being able to clearly identify what was working and what wasn't. This really allowed us to reshape what we were doing which had a really significant impact on our plans. Also, our programme and project teams were able to raise in timely manner issues, risks, and decisions relating to their activities, that needed to be brought to the attention of the leadership team. In time, I can see it replacing our monthly status reports. What really made a difference to us what this isn't just another point tool. Shapecast had a whole structure and method which really helped us through a process.

Inconvénients :

The team at Shapecast, were very responsive to our feedback. Though it would be nice to have a feature that allowed every member of the team to directly communicate the feedback to Shapecast on 1:1 basis.

StrategyWorks - Its in the name!

Commentaires : very positive , great software with highly knowledgeable staff , would not hesitate in recommending it .

Avantages :

I instantly liked the principle of being able to start with documenting the companies mission and vison and then mapping our strategies intuitively to the required OKRs and KPIs that our programmes , projects and tasks set out to achieve . This offered our people a clear ` line of sight ' of what was to be achieved and why . This supported bringing our vison to life and for our people it helped them better understand the role they were playing to deliver it. This is unlike typical project software that tends to focus on a specific work package and outcome in isolation. Strategyworks is about organisational strategic delivery, as I said its in the name !. It allowed me to easily consolidate all the required bodies of work, whilst having a on demand view of all deliverables ,milestones ,risks and dependencies through its consolidated dashboard .

Inconvénients :

Not a biggy , but I think visually it could be stronger especially for the dashboard

Simplifies complexity in change

Commentaires : I have been working with the product on client projects for several years. It is consistently improving to simplify the experience rather than add more feature complexity.

Avantages :

It is simple, intuitive, and easy to use. If the existing corporate taxonomy and governance models are already understood by the user base, the product needs little or no additional training to use. Elegant and effective.

Inconvénients :

It depends on coherent strategy and governance processes, if they are not robust the software cannot fix that. If your organisation uses a corporate taxonomy that is significantly different to the standard VMOST/VMOSA the product will need customisation.

Ditch the spreadsheets!

Commentaires : Senior exec teams within large organisations often want regular sight and update of their programme portfolios. This often involves delivery teams running around the organisation collecting various amounts of data on spreadsheets whilst wasting valuable hours compiling and consolidating data into multiple reports. StrategyWorks allows delivery teams to go about their day to day business whilst senior key stakeholders have the ability to engage with the platform to pull any reports they so wish. This is ensures timely, consistant and real time reporting without the business interuption.

Avantages :

Complete clarity and accountability for all strategic related activity on single platform. This beautifully designed execution tool enables leadership teams to define, allocate, track and manage the delivery of multiple strategic programmes across multiple delivery teams providing visibility and clarity of the objectives, supporting strategies and activities through an intuitive and realtime analytics dashboard. The simple and user friendly dashboard provides all key topline information in a single view so no need to go hunting. Navigating and drilling down for further detail is easy and logically with even the most complex data displayed in a clear and succint format allowing easy identification of activity that is running late, behind or on track.

Inconvénients :

This execution tools is extremely comprehensive. A mobile app providing a 'light' version of the platform would be hugely beneficial.

StrategyWorks Review

Avantages :

This is a tool that gives a rapid way of pulling together all the component parts needed to achieve a vision. A Programme Director would find this a really useful way of being able to control his programme and present key metrics about progress and performance to senior management. Submitting information on portfolio progress and performance into a central portfolio office allows the production of visual and textual information for an executive team to determine whether the portfolio of programmes and projects are contributing effectively to the realisation of a corporate vision. This would replace homegrown portfolio, programme and project reporting tools built and maintained by PMOs with something that is intuitive with good looking output. It also may avoid the need to purchase and manage big, costly portfolio management tools. Many companies struggle to determine what programmes and projects directly support strategic aims and what don’t. Also, it’s often difficult to demonstrate whether a programme or project still continues to support company strategy, even if it did at initiation. I have run exercises with a number of my clients to rationalise portfolios so that all programmes and projects therein demonstrate clear support for strategy and are not in the portfolio because of someone shouting loud enough. StrategyWorks would have been a really useful tool to have at that time.

Inconvénients :

A few minor gripes, but I'm sure that the guys at ShapeCast have these covered on the SW product roadmap