What's the Impact of Your Pre-Execution Lag?

The obstacle to realizing more value out of your portfolio may be in upstream bottlenecks and not just downstream execution.

Like how long it takes to get a study/initiative resourced, scoped, and approved.

That's pre-execution lag and it's invisible on most dashboards because it happens before the project is formally open. But it shows up later as "slow cycle time" getting misdiagnosed as an execution problem.

Key tactics to address:

• Redesign the intake process so it has exit criteria, not just entry criteria. Most intake processes are queues, not filters. Managers held accountable to act as a forcing function triage first - the first stage of prioritization. If your prioritization is happening at the end with senior leadership, that's a waste of resources and time.

  
  

  • METRIC TO TRACK = Average time from submission to disposition decision (approved/rejected/deferred). If you can't measure it, your intake is a black box.

  
  

• Resource capacity before approval. Most orgs won't assign resources until a project is formally approved so it's no wonder estimates end up being over-inflated placeholders. Soft-reserve capacity so you can avoid the usual secondary queue after approval lands and classic bottlenecks emerge.

  
  

  • METRIC TO TRACK = Lag between approval date and resource assignment date. This is a good indicator of a secondary queue problem hiding inside your cycle time number and collaboration needs to start much earlier for more efficient and effective portfolio outcomes.

Take a close look at your portfolio process. Are your teams and resources putting enough time and effort into the pre-execution phases? The pre-execution work is crucial to optimizing the efficiency and value of your portfolio. A bad portfolio backlog takes a toll, costing your resources time and money that could be better spent on high priority work that adds value aligned with your strategy.