It is a common pattern: the committee approves initiatives one at a time, each with a sound business case, and months later asks the PMO to speed things up because nothing is moving at the expected pace. The diagnosis usually points to execution. The cause is almost always earlier: in how many initiatives were approved compared with the real capacity to deliver them.
The arithmetic nobody does
If the team has capacity for a certain number of initiatives in parallel and the committee approves twice that, the outcome is predictable: everything moves halfway, key people jump from one project to another and deadlines slip in a cascade. No dashboard or agile methodology makes up for that imbalance.
Three signs the problem is selection
- The same people show up as critical on several projects at once.
- New initiatives are approved without closing or pausing any existing ones.
- Committee conversations are about status, not priorities.
What to do differently
Measure capacity before approving. Every new initiative should state which critical resources it needs and where they will come from.
Limit work in progress. An explicit cap on active initiatives forces a decision about what goes in and what waits.
Make pausing a legitimate decision. Pausing or closing an initiative with clear criteria frees capacity for the ones that create the most value.
Execution improves much faster once the portfolio stops asking the team for the impossible.