The People, Process, & Progress Podcast - Lessons in Portfolio Management from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim | S4 Ep21

Episode Date: April 14, 2025

In Lessons in Project Management from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, I share how the choices made in the virtual fantasy world of Skyrim parallel the strategic decisions Portfolio Managers and leaders must make when planning, resourcing, and executing projects within their organizations' portfolios.Episode focus areas:Effective resource allocation and prioritizationEffective stakeholder managementEffective risk managementEffective progress tracking and benefit realizationGodpseed y'all,Kevin

Hey everybody, welcome back to the People Process Progress Podcast. I'm your host Kevin Pennell. Today we're going to explore some connections between seemingly disparate worlds I'm going to nerd out a little bit on video games and share that as a 51 year old bearded man, sometimes you need an escape. Right, for me, perhaps for many of you juggling the beautiful chaos of marriage and fatherhood and work and all those other earthly stressors, gate comes in the form of the vast snowy landfill dragons magic and its possibilities what I'm talking about is the world of Elder Scrolls 5 Skyrim

it's more than a game it's a chance to forge your own path to make decisions and and all with the ability to just reset and turn it off unlike the world. In fact, my first foray into Skyrim I played, it was straight out of the box, didn't change anything, no modifications. It's a masterpiece, it's amazing and this game is now 11 years old. But then I discovered this world called creations or mods, modifications. And so just like these mods can improve this older game's graphics and countless other aspects further enriching the experience, think about that in post-project enhancements that significantly boost the value and impact the work.

And believe it or not, that very freedom in the Skyrim game that I have when I'm in this pretend world, both in its initial form and then modded, it's surprisingly profound messages and lessons for the world of project portfolio management. So on today's episode, FUSRO Portfolio Lessons in Project Management for Skyrim, I'm going to talk about some of these parallels and you don't have to be familiar with this game, but if you're familiar with portfolio management and project management Or even if you're not you'll come to find out that the choices you can have in a video game that seem almost endless Are almost the same as project and portfolio management Let's get logged in and get locked on this episode of the people process progress podcast

of the People Process Progress Podcast. So the video game Skyrim and portfolio management will grab your potions of insight and sharpen your metaphorical swords because we're about to draw the fascinating parallels between the Dragonborn, which is the main character you play in this game, and the orchestration of a successful project portfolio. So at its heart, Skyrim offers players a whole bunch of choices, right? You can pick what kind of player you wanna be, then you can go on these different quests,

you can specialize as a mage, which is a magic person, a warrior, which is a fighter, or a thief, which you're really stealthy. But think of it like choosing your initial career path or choosing what program you're gonna line these things with. So the initial choice is much like the strategic pillars of your portfolio can dictate the type of projects or in Skyrim's case quest lines

that become the most relevant and accessible to you. Right, so a warrior is gonna focus on a quest line where you pair up with other warriors and you fight and use a sword and a shield. And then as a mage where you pair up with other warriors and you fight use a sword and a shield and then as a mage you're gonna discover magic and go to this college called Winterhold which the whole focus of it is to develop magic right and there's a thieves guild and you can steal things and be you know work your way up to be super stealthy where you can just hide in the shadows

and all these kind of things right right? So these quest lines are like diverse projects within the portfolio. And just like projects that are in programs or maybe just make up part of your portfolio, some of these quest lines are short, some are really long where you have multiple quests that make up this whole kind of saga, right? And so say you're a portfolio manager, you've got to balance the different kind of saga, right? And so, say you're a portfolio manager,

you gotta balance the different types of projects, right? Well, as your character, you have to do the same thing. You can't be everywhere at once, you can't do all the same skills, you don't build the skills the same. So, this brings us to a crucial aspect of portfolio management that I think is illustrated in Skyrim,

and that's resource allocation and prioritization, right? A player in the game, you have limited time, skill points, inventory, you can't carry everything with you. You have to decide what do I want to keep, what don't I, based on the value of it, how you level up, what skills you want to get. And so in portfolio management, the leadership needs to make strategic choices about where to allocate limited resources as well, right? Budget, personnel, time across various projects and initiatives. So what are what are three tips that we can consider that work both in portfolio management, then if you happen to go play the game also apply to that.

They have to do with resource allocation and prioritization. So one clear criteria, right? We need to have specific criteria for evaluating and prioritizing projects. Do they align with our strategy for the organization? What's the potential return on investment? What's the risk? Do we have the resources at this time? Right, so clear criteria,

and we have to be able to match the work and the project that someone wants to do versus what we need to do. The second thing is regularly review and adjust, right? So we don't wanna just take a snapshot and say it can never change kind of that old school waterfall locked in, but we need to regularly review what's in the portfolio.

Does it still make sense? What do we need to take in? What should we do sooner? Because some things that are easier to do, we wanna do sooner because you get a quick win. Some things that are easier to do, we don't have time to do, because of resources, right?

And the third thing for this that helps with resource allocation and prioritization is capacity planning. So if we can project how many projects we're gonna do in a given year or months or quarters or whatever breakout, and then we can align that with what resources we do or don't have, we can avoid overloading resources, right? And not be delayed in quality.

Just like in the game, if you want to keep too many things, you can't run because you're overburdened with stuff. Just like you can overburden your people and your portfolio for projects. So another parallel and the concept of stakeholder management, right, in the Skyrim game, you have these NPCs or non playable characters and you have to interact with them You have to talk to them

Maybe what you choose to say depends on their response or rather what you say Changes their response and it's it's again. It's it's amazing game. I've seen or not about it, but it changes the course That that you take of your quest in the game, right how you respond in the business world of your quest in the game, right? How you respond in the business world, clients, employees, investors, right? Regulatory bodies, how we respond to them, what information we share, what information we don't share, that all affects what we're able to do.

And I think to be a successful portfolio manager, we need to understand the needs and expectations of all the different groups, right? And if we fail to manage the stakeholder expectations, that's gonna be a problem in the game. It can send you to a dead end where you don't get to this ultimate quest and you get some sort of artifact or something

in portfolio management. You don't get approved. You don't get the budget. You don't get the time. So how do we effectively manage stakeholders? And again, stakeholders are folks that have an interest either as a leader or a team member or both, or the folks that are gonna use the product. So one, identify and analyze them, right?

That's the old racy chart, right? Who's responsible, who's accountable, who do we consult and ask questions and how do we keep folks informed? But that's a good thing to do. It's a very good exercise and good to understand who is ultimately responsible for everything, which is typically your sponsor,

often maybe your business owner, who's accountable for everything, which is typically your sponsor, often maybe your business owner, who's accountable for it, for getting it done, which is us, the project, the manager. And then there's other folks, our experts, we need to consult. And then some leaders, we just need to be informed if we don't need them to make a decision. The second thing is communicate proactively and transparently, right? We don't want to hide the status of the project. We don't wanna sugarcoat what's happening. And of course there's ways to say everything, but we don't wanna say our project is good to go when it's on fire in the background

just so, cause we're worried about what might happen. It's more helpful to be objective and transparent. And the third thing is actively listen, right? Actively listen to the feedback from your stakeholders. Be honest in the discussion you have with them as far as does that seem practical what you've suggested or the timeline you'd like this thing to happen? Just like in the game, if you answer a certain way,

you could shut down the whole conversation in a real life, 100% that happens all the time, right? So another thing in Skyrim that is a great parallel to project and portfolio management is risk management, right? Should I go fight that group of four people when I'm a low level person and I don't have a lot of power? Or should we undertake this project that is high risk

and it's gonna cost a lot and the payoff could be good if we're successful, but we have to adjust on how we can do that, right? So we need to do a risk assessment, we need to mitigate risk, which means do something to lessen the impact if things go bad. So like in the game, I could lessen the impact if I take a couple shots with a bow and arrow, and then I run away, and then I move around from low level. There's strategies, right? And same

thing for projects where I could spend a little money here and put a little more effort using internal resources here versus contractors, and a whole bunch of things you can do to assess the risk. And so here are three tips that I think are good for portfolio managers for risk management. So regular assessments, regular risk assessments. So proactively identifying and analyzing potential risks across the portfolio. We're always looking at that.

What's the likelihood that something's gonna happen, whether it's an internal factor or an external factor. Contingency plans, you've heard me talk about that here on the podcast plenty of times, that PACE planning. Always know my primary plan on a sunny day, the weather's perfect, we got all the funds, what are we gonna do? And then what's our alternate plan,

because we now are at 75% funds, and it's a little stormy outside. And then what's our contingency plan, where funding's been cut a lot, we have now half the time of a resource. And then our emergency plan, that E for PACE, is this is worst case scenario where we need to get to a decision on

we're gonna limp through the project or we're gonna have to shut it off because we don't have the money and the time and the resources anymore. And then the third thing is we have to establish risk tolerance levels. So we can have a great risk matrix and have them identified, but we need to know who's comfortable with taking risk,

who is not, what's a detriment to the organization or what's not, right? And so what can we actively mitigate or lessen the impact to or avoid? And what can we accept, right? Because some risk, one strategy for risk management is accepting the risk and saying, yep, we understand it's gonna cost a little bit more, but we have the funds now or that it's going to take more time from this resource

but we can dedicate them just like again if i'm a low level player in the skyrim game and i go up against a group of folks and don't have a lot of power but i think i want to get that prize at the end of the quest i might go for it so if we want this what done looks like this output of this project is going to be such an advantage for folks, then it's worth taking the risk sometimes. It's finally let's, let's consider progress and value realization, right? People process progress. So where people work in a process, the whole point is to make progress in some capacity,

right? And so as you work through a game, a video game like Skyrim, you get new abilities. You can take more hits, you can move a little faster, you get different magic, all these kind of nerdy things that I say that that are cool in the game. And in a well managed portfolio, also, you want to know what am I getting out of this? And so that's where those key performance indicators, those KPIs come in, right? We want to measure the benefits realized. And in best practice form,

we have set up our KPIs early in the process, and then we're just gonna measure against them, middle and ongoing. And so we want clear KPIs, clear key performance indicators with numbers, right? And not just we want people to be more happy, happiness and satisfaction, that's such a hard thing to measure.

But you can use numbers, like let's say we wanna reduce documentation time for staff, right, by whatever percent. So first we need to measure, what's the documentation time for this particular task now? Then we're gonna do the project, we're gonna build the project around making that better with either technology or workflows or both.

Then we're gonna measure it again afterwards and know, hey, we reduced time by like three minutes and it used to take 10 minutes and now it takes seven minutes. So that's where you wanna get a good comprehensive key performance indicator process in tracking, not just, and then by default, folks typically are happier if they're spending less time on administrative stuff. The second thing for progress and value realization is

regularly monitor and report on value, right? So we're tracking those KPIs, but we're also talking about them regularly. We're on track for them, we're not on track for them. We think the money we're spending is being spent well because folks seem happier, right? So we wanna be able to report on those regularly. And the third is celebrate milestones as a success, right?

So celebration should be built into every project plan because people are gonna come together for many meetings. You're gonna work for many hours. You're gonna spend lots of money. There's gonna be good times and sad times and frustration among the team. And just like I have a sense of accomplishment, when I get through this cool quest to get this new power in the game, in the real world, it's even better because real people work together through tough times and the project. And now we come out on the

other side, and we've helped improve documentation that saved time so let's say our nurses have more time with the patient. That's huge, right? Or whatever industry you're in. So the next time you find yourself perhaps in the world of Skyrim on the snowy peaks, take a few minutes to appreciate the principles at play, right? You're making choices and decisions on quests, right? You're managing resources. There's stakeholders through the non-playable characters that you quests, right? You're managing resources, there's stakeholders

through the non-playable characters that you have, right? And you're affecting your portfolio, which is the entire world, which is a vast expanse, just like in the real world, where you have millions of dollars, multiple projects, different programs you're aligning. So while you might be shouting, Foos, ro, dah, in your next portfolio review,

that's powers you get, these big shouts, and it's probably best not to be shouting things in the portfolio review the the lessons learned I think from this Dragonborn character the importance of strategic strategic alignment resource allocation stakeholder management risk mitigation value realization and then talking about those things along with the potential for post delivery enhancements right because just because we put something out in the world doesn't mean we can't come back and touch it or we're gonna get feedback from folks, this kind of post go live optimization,

which is a good thing. They're undeniably relevant to anyone navigating the landscape of projects and initiatives. Thank you so much for joining me on this Foosrow Portfolio episode of the People Process Progress podcast. I hope you found this exploration of the world of Skyrim and it's surprising connections I I think that it has to portfolio management

Insightful perhaps even a little bit adventurous If you want the ultimate adventure getting yourself into a more stable mindset more balanced physical form spiritual alignment consider purchasing The stability equation seven pillars for a more balanced life on Amazon Kindle or paperback or hardcover. It's my first book, it came out last week. And it really is a journey of me being in a hard place, trying to find a lot of answers from different people, and then finding them both in books, online, and talking to other folks, my family and friends.

And it's really, you're in one place, Google search for the solutions to problems many of us have, but don't know where to look, right? You're feeling anxious, you're in a depressive state, you've had past trauma, someone was just diagnosed with something bad and it's upsetting you and you're not sure how to process that physically or mentally or all of the above.

And so the stability equation, those seven pillars that I talk about in there of ownership, mindfulness, movement, boundaries, connection, sleep and faith have really helped me work through hard times So the stability equation those seven pillars that I talk about in there of ownership mindfulness movement boundaries connection Sleep and faith have really helped me work through hard times and help me maintain even in the normal time So thank you for considering the book. Please join me next time. You can subscribe on Apple Spotify everywhere podcasts are played Follow me on X and Instagram at Penel KG if you want some fitness ideas some cold plunge Videos and some Brazilian jiu-jitsu class after action reviews check out the Penel 5 Fitness Club YouTube channel. That's Penel PNNL Number 5 Fitness Club until then may your projects be ever successful and your dragons be ever slain again

I've been Kevin Penel. This is the People Process Progress Podcast. Thanks so much for subscribing and listening. Stay safe out there. Wash those hands and Godspeed.