On-time delivery
from 4% to 95%.

A portfolio living
a life of its own.

The client — a manufacturer of automated production lines — was running several dozen projects at once. Each in its own way: no common standard, no single source of truth on status, no procedure defining who is responsible for what and what happens when a project starts to fall apart.

The numbers showed it: on-time delivery at around 4%, an average project cycle of 391 days, and projects finishing on average half a year after their deadline. The team was working hard — but the system was getting in the way instead of helping.

Four pillars of change.

• A PMO procedure covering the whole portfolio — one standard for running a project: from opening, through status reporting, to closure. Clear roles, clear decision gates.
• A trained team — project management training for the people running projects, so that the procedure became a tool in their hands, not a document on a shared drive.
• A new design engineer integrated into the project structure — strengthening the team where a bottleneck was blocking the flow of projects.
• Cooperation with an external production-support company — bringing in a partner to relieve the team at peak load.

A year of systematic work,
not a revolution.

The change did not happen through one workshop or one presentation to the board. It was systematic work week after week: first diagnosis and portfolio mapping, then a procedure built together with the team — not against it — followed by training, a pilot on selected projects and a gradual rollout of the standard across the whole portfolio.

The key principle: the procedure had to serve the people running the projects. Every element that did not help in real work was thrown out. What stayed is what really brings order: a single source of status, a clear review rhythm, visible bottlenecks.

The system works as long
as someone maintains it.

At the end of the engagement, the client heard one uncomfortable thing from me:

“This procedure works as long as someone looks after it. Without a person maintaining it, the portfolio will most likely drift back to its previous parameters over time.”

That is why the last stage of the implementation was a structured handover of the system to the team — who takes ownership, what tools they have, how they will notice when something starts to slip. The team was not left alone with it.

For companies that want additional safety, there is also an external oversight model: after implementation, the role changes from leading to external expert — portfolio monitoring, guidance for the team, reacting before a problem grows. A few days a month instead of full engagement.