Our former Community of Practice "Pragmatic Multi-Project Management for SMEs" has been renamed "Enterprise Agility for SMEs."
This is much more than a name change. It reflects our true mission: translating the PMI Enterprise Agility Manifesto into a pragmatic approach that helps small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) make better decisions, allocate resources more effectively, and respond faster to change. Project Portfolio Management is not the objective itself—it is the means to achieve Enterprise Agility.
The need has never been greater. SMEs are expected to manage digital transformation, AI adoption, increasing regulatory requirements, and skilled labor shortages—all at the same time. Yet many hesitate to introduce Project Portfolio Management because traditional approaches are perceived as too complex, too resource-intensive, and designed primarily for large enterprises.
In our experience, the real problem is rarely poor or missing project management. More often, organizations suffer from organizational overload: too many projects running in parallel, permanently overloaded resources, and constantly shifting priorities.
This is exactly where our Community of Practice comes in. Based on a small set of pragmatic management principles, we are developing an implementation approach that enables SMEs to gain transparency across their entire project portfolio within just two to four weeks, providing the foundation for better management decisions. The focus is on less bureaucracy, a small set of meaningful KPIs, and rapid visibility of resource bottlenecks.
A key success factor of our approach is the implementation sequence. Many organizations start by introducing new Project Management processes, investing considerable time in methods, standards, and tools. Our approach is deliberately different:
Portfolio Management first. Project Management second.
Only after creating transparency across projects, priorities, and resources does it make sense to optimize project management practices. This sequence enables organizations to achieve visible improvements within weeks while establishing the foundation for sustainable Enterprise Agility.
By Autumn 2026, we aim to finalize our pragmatic concept, enabling SMEs to achieve their first improvements in portfolio transparency and decision-making within just four weeks. We plan to present the concept at the PM-Summit 2026 in November.
Through our pilot program, we support selected SMEs on their journey towards Enterprise Agility over a period of three months, free of charge, following the principle of "helping companies help themselves."
f you know an SME that is looking for pragmatic and lean ways to achieve Enterprise Agility, we would be delighted to hear from you.
