Case Studies

How to Greenlight Projects Based on Corporate Strategy

Navy Federal Credit Union has always maintained a strong commitment to the members it serves. With that commitment comes the ongoing challenge to maintain service excellence, a competitive portfolio of products, and the most current customer and financial systems. To address these challenges, Navy Federal had embarked on nearly 100 functional and technical projects. However, not all projects were clearly defined or in alignment with corporate goals and objectives.

To address this business challenge, Navy Federal's senior management team embarked on an end-to-end Project Portfolio Management (PPM) project that would ultimately define a framework for "greenlighting" all projects going forward. To assist them with the effort, Navy Federal engaged North Highland to implement a rigorous and proven approach to portfolio management. The team reviewed and prioritized all corporate initiatives based on a predefined set of criteria that aligned directly to Navy Federal's corporate vision. The new portfolio included both strategic and tactical projects and, once approved, was communicated throughout the organization.

Once the new portfolio was well-defined and communicated, North Highland helped Navy Federal design and implement a governance program that was launched to the entire organization. This governance program is the management structure for all future Navy Federal projects and guarantees that approved and funded initiatives will be strategically aligned with its corporate objectives.

As a result of this engagement, Navy Federal was able to either defer or eliminate 40% of projects from its portfolio—literally redirecting a significant number of man-hours that would have been expended on non-value add initiatives to only those projects that were objectively determined to be more strategic and of much higher value to the organization.

Access the complete case study to learn more about North Highland's PPM offerings.