Programme and Portfolio Capability: Change Agents and Frameworks

This report analyzes the role of change agents in developing programme and portfolio management (PPM) capability. Part 1 assesses various change agents, including managers, management consultants, and employees, detailing their significance in organizational development and change initiatives. It emphasizes the importance of their interpersonal skills and ability to foster acceptance of changes. Part 2 offers a reflective perspective on the change agents and their roles, highlighting the importance of collaboration and support during major change initiatives. Part 3 provides an example of an organization, Peter Piper, utilizing change agents to enhance its portfolio management, competency frameworks, and how people's actions affect PPM efficiency. The report examines the competency frameworks, such as ethics and leadership, and how these frameworks impact the overall success of PPM initiatives. It also explores how the actions of individuals, including managers, employees, and stakeholders, directly influence an organization's capability to deliver effective and efficient PPM outcomes. The report draws on several references to support the analysis.

Running head: Programme and portfolio capability
Portfolio management
Name of Student
Name of the University
Author note

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Table of Contents
Part 1..........................................................................................................................................2
Change agents for organizational development.....................................................................2
Managers................................................................................................................................2
Management consultants........................................................................................................3
Employees..............................................................................................................................3
Part 2..........................................................................................................................................3
Part 3..........................................................................................................................................4
Provide an example of an organisation that utilises/utilised change agents as part of a major
change initiative to develop its programme or portfolio management capability..................4
Competency frameworks for programme and portfolio management...................................5
Actions of people that can affect an organisation’s capability to deliver effective and
efficient PPM.........................................................................................................................6
References..................................................................................................................................8

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Part 1
Change agents for organizational development
Over last two decades, the significance and role of the change agents for the overall
development of the organizations has become a matter of enormous interest. Change agents
may external or internal to the organization, who actively participate in the development
programmes of the organization by concentrating on several matters such as, organizational
improvement, development and effectiveness (Too and Weaver 2014). The change agents
having several interpersonal skills such as, creativity, risk adoptability, possessing clear
thoughts and has the ability to conceptualize will surely become advantageous for the
organizational development (Caldwell 2003). Change agents are important in serving
distinctive roles within the change initiatives as the proponent of change and conduit between
the leadership and the rest entities of the firm. Several change agents for enhancing the
productivity of the organization can be as follows;
Managers
Every time when the business intended to introduce any kind of change, it always
relies on the productive communication from the organizational management for gaining
acceptance from the employees. Traditionally, the managers in the organizations are
considered to be the persons with power and legitimate authority to direct and observe the
organizational activities of one or more subordinates (Blomquist and Müller 2006).
Managers of the organization play vital role in motivating as well as informing the employees
about every organizational activities to ensure high productivity of the organization. It is
necessary for the managers to make the employees understand as well as show positive
response towards the major business changes such as, adoption of new technologies,

3PROGRAMME AND PORTFOLIO CAPABILITY
corporate reconstructing and new business procedures. Managers, as the change agents
require to ensure the smooth running of all these process.
Management consultants
The last couple of decades has evidenced dramatic changes in rise of the management
consultants. The management consultants are the important change agents for the
organizations, who acts for changing the perspective of the organizational management about
the emerging environments (Benn, Edwards and Williams 2014). These consultants provide
authority of information and knowledge require for any kind of change initiatives. In addition
to that, they familiarize the organizational management with several problem solving
processes. The duty of a typical management consultant is to act as an advisor as well as
guide to the taskforce that comprised of the client personnel. Therefore, it can be said that the
management consultants can become the catalyst in organizational development.
Employees
Employees are the vital asserts as well as internal change agents of the organization.
Employees deploy efficient trove of the complementary skills, which are vital in solving the
organizational puzzles. The organizational employees are responsible for converting the
managerial ideas and tactics in action. Highly motivated employees can deliver comparative
productive work and ensure the organizational profit and development. Moreover, it can be
said that, the managers as well as the top level leaders of the organization will make their
tactics successful only when the employees of the organization will provide support and
coordination to them. Hence, it is necessary for the organization to provide efficient work
environment to the employees where they can actualize their potentials as the self-initiating
change agents.

4PROGRAMME AND PORTFOLIO CAPABILITY
Part 2
It is the responsibility of the change agents to promote as well as support the ongoing
changes within the organization. In my perspective, the change agents should promote the
effectiveness of the transformation, formulate the transformation as well as support and guide
others through that transformation. Considering one example, when the organization intended
to change any of its business process, the change agents such as managers, employees as well
as the management consultants need to cooperate with each other for making that change
successful. I think that, the change agents can implicate major change initiatives for
developing its portfolio management capabilities.
Part 3
Provide an example of an organisation that utilises/utilised change agents as part
of a major change initiative to develop its programme or portfolio management
capability
In order to initiate, manage as well as implement significant changes in the
organization, it is necessary to have appropriate change agents for the organization. The role
of the organizational development as the change agents appears focused on the
implementation of different challenges (Thiry 2004). The concept of the change agents
calculated more in terms of a team process rather than one individual task. The New York
based food industry named Peter Piper is utilising several change agents in order to enhance
its portfolio management process (Peterpiperpizza.com 2019). The managers of this
organization implicate the power of forming several tactics, calculating the complex of the
project and supervising the activities of the employees associated with the particular project.
The management consultants of the organization play major role in making the portfolio
management successful. These consultants are way sensitive to the client attitudes and values

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towards the organization. They consider the client centred approach for managing the
complex projects. The management consultants associated with the organization always
attain the ongoing changes in the business process as well as the inside organizational activity
smoothly and provide appropriate guidance to the organizational managers to stay away from
any kind of complications in projects. These consultants create several new prospective to
bring suitable changes to the organization (Blomquist and Müller 2006).
Competency frameworks for programme and portfolio management
The competence framework is beneficial for the organisations, individuals as well as the
training providers within a particular programme, project or portfolio management
(Enterprise Portfolio Management Council 2009). The competence management framework
also identified as the company based management that supports the business planning with
several organizational departments to achieve the organizational mission, vision and
objectives (Killen, Hunt and Kleinschmidt 2008). It is well known to the corporate managers
that promoting the proven project managers into any program managers role, might become
unreliable; yet, some experiments can be done in the distinctiveness of programme
management competence. In case of the large organizations, the programme or portfolio
management competence have become a vital capability (Partington, Pellegrinelli and Young
2005).In order to carryout effective programme as well as portfolio management, there are
several competency frameworks, which are as follows;
Ethics, professionalism and Compliance: It implicate the ability to promote wider public
good in every action and to behave socially, morally and legally in a comparatively
appropriate for manner dealing with the members of an organization. Ethics implies the
appropriate moral as well as the conduct principle within a program and portfolio
management. Whereas, the professionalism deploys the knowledge and skill to understand

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the particular project. Competence entails the abiding and understanding of the rights
associated with the portfolio management.
Capability development: It explains the ability to access the organizational maturity related to
the programme and portfolio management. It describes implementation of several strategies
for the effective project, programme and portfolio management.
Conflict management: It explains the capacity of identifying, addressing as well as resolving
all the differences occurs between the individuals or groups associated with a programme and
portfolio management (González-Marcos 2014).
Leadership: The ability to inspire and empower the employees for delivering successful
change initiative associated to the portfolio management.
Contract management: It describes the ability to view and agree the contract for provision of
the product, service and goods to manage the variance and monitoring the compliance.
Actions of people that can affect an organisation’s capability to deliver effective
and efficient PPM
A typical programme and portfolio management focuses on enhance the efficiency
and effectiveness of the project with several independent objects. The core component of a
portfolio management comprises with establishing one infrastructure in order to support the
programme and project, defining several management processes that will be used across the
projects and coordinating the limited resources via matching the demand with the supply
(Kevin 2015). Portfolio management implies the techniques for optimizing several
organizational returns from different project investments via enhancing the alignments of the
projects with several tactics and enabling resource efficiency (Koh and Crawford 2012).
However, in order to carry out one successful programme and portfolio management, it
requires the coordination of several people, typically identified as the change agents of the

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organization. These change agents are the people whose activities put direct impact on the
organizational development. The people associated with the project, programme and portfolio
managements of an organization are the managers, employees and other stakeholders
associated with the organizations. It is the responsibility of the project managers to analyse
the complexity of the project and form effective strategies to get success in that particular
project (Partington, Pellegrinelli and Young 2005). Whereas, it is necessary for the
organizational employees to perform cooperatively with the managers. Apart from the
employees and managers, activities of all the stakeholders associated with the project or
portfolio management directly affect its outcome. However, the portfolio management
sometime create complex for the middle level managers for managing its process, practice
and people. Nevertheless, along with the higher diffusion of the project management, several
new managerial role have been evolved. Conducting effective project management training
on a regular time interval can become beneficial for the organizational managers as well as
employees for understanding the portfolio management in a comparative better way (Thiry
2010).

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References
Benn, S., Edwards, M. and Williams, T., 2014. Organizational change for corporate
sustainability. Routledge.
Blomquist, T. and Müller, R. 2006 ‘Practices, roles and responsibilities of middle managers
in program and portfolio management’, Project Management Journal, 37 (1), pp. 52-66
Caldwell, R. 2003 ‘Models of change agency: a fourfold classification’, British Journal of
Management, 14 (2), June, pp. 131-142.
Enterprise Portfolio Management Council 2009 Project portfolio management: a view from
the management trenches.Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
Enterprise Portfolio Management Council 2009 Project portfolio management: a view from
the management trenches. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.
González-Marcos, A., Alba-Elías, F., Meré, J.B.O. and Navaridas-Nalda, F., 2014, April.
Cross-analysis of Transversal Competences in Project Management. In CSEDU (2) (pp. 34-
41).
Kevin, S., 2015. Security analysis and portfolio management. PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd..
Killen, C., Hunt, R.A. and Kleinschmidt, E.J. 2008 ‘Project portfolio management for
product innovation’, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 25 (1), pp.
24-38.
Koh, A. and Crawford, L. 2012 ‘Portfolio management: the Australian experience’, Project
Management Journal, 43 (6), December, pp. 33-42.

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Partington, D., Pellegrinelli, S. and Young, M. 2005 ‘Attributes and levels of programme
management competence: an interpretive study’, International Journal of Project
Management, 23 (2), February, pp. 87-95.
Peterpiperpizza.com. (2019). Peter Piper Pizza. [online] Available at:
https://www.peterpiperpizza.com/contact [Accessed 19 Jul. 2019].
Thiry, M. 2004 ‘How can the benefits of PM training programs be improved?’, International
Journal of Project Management, 22 (1), January, pp. 13-18.
Thiry, M. 2010 Program management. Farnham, Surrey:Gower.
Too, E.G. and Weaver, P., 2014. The management of project management: A conceptual
framework for project governance. International Journal of Project Management, 32(8),
pp.1382-1394.