Overcommitment, Re-Baselined Tolerances, and Unclaimed Benefits in a Pharma Portfolio

A better dashboard on top of gameable measures simply distributes the distortion faster. Two measures are actively misleading. On-time delivery is green for the submission platform only because the tolerance was widened - that measure is reporting the re-baseline, not the performance. Utilization at 118% is being read as efficiency when it is the leading indicator of the lateness: at sustained over-100% utilization, queue time grows non-linearly and every small variance cascades.

Recommended changes:

• Report original approved baseline and current forecast side by side, with a count of re-baselines per component as a governance quality metric. Frequent re-baselining is a symptom, not housekeeping.
• Replace raw utilization with capacity metrics by scarce skill, plus queue time and work-in-progress. Throughput and cycle time expose overcommitment; utilization hides it.
• Add benefits realization against plan, with claimed versus validated separated.
• Add a dependency health indicator, since the test-resource conflict is a dependency failure, not a scheduling failure.

"Single source of truth" is a data model problem first: one component register, one benefits register, one published set of status definitions and RAG criteria. Buying a dashboard before defining status is how portfolios end up with two truths in one tool.

This is a portfolio prioritisation decision, not a negotiation between two project managers, and it should not be settled informally by whoever escalates hardest. Frame it as a decision with three inputs: the regulatory consequence of slippage (licence delay, fines, filing windows), the financial exposure of the $40 million benefit and whether it is contractually committed, and the cost of pausing or re-phasing the supply-chain component.

Options to put to the steering committee:

• Ring-fence the regulatory platform with a named team and an explicit date, and formally re-phase supply-chain analytics with a recovery plan and a new benefits forecast. This is usually the defensible choice when a filing window is immovable.
• Both at current rate - not feasible at 118% utilization; it simply converts a known conflict into two late components.
• Split the scarce test skills - only viable if the supply-chain work can be re-sequenced to reduce test demand, which the options paper should test rather than assume.

Whatever is chosen, the supply-chain benefit owner must be told directly and sign off the revised benefit forecast. Silently borrowing their engineers transfers a hidden risk to a business owner who will report a shortfall later. Record the decision and its rationale; the next contention will be argued by analogy to this one.

Completion without claimed benefits is a strategic alignment problem disguised as an accounting gap. The portfolio cannot demonstrate value, and unclaimed benefits are often unrealisable benefits that were never properly owned.

Actions:

• Identify the benefit owner for each - a business owner, not the IT delivery lead - and establish whether measurement has genuinely not started, or whether the benefit is lagging by nature (a realization lag is legitimate and should be stated with a measurement window).
• Test credibility. Re-examine whether the baseline was ever measurable and whether the benefit is attributable to the component rather than to market movement or a parallel initiative. Some of these benefits may need to be retired honestly.
• Define the measurement approach: baseline, metric, data source, review date, and who signs off validation. Separate leading indicators (adoption, processing time) from lagging financial outcomes.
• Report claimed and validated benefits separately in every pack, so no one can quote an unvalidated number as delivered value.

Also check whether the missing claims are caused by the completion process itself - if components close without a benefits handover step, this will recur on all 26 remaining.