Interviewee: P6, PM Novum
Role: portfolio-manager
Date: —
Interviewer: —
Interview Summary
Portfolio manager role
The PM has a clearly distinct role in each phase of a project. At the start, he assesses whether a project should be taken on at all: does it fit the innovation methodology, are the right people and the right mandate in place, is there sufficient priority, and is the chance of implementation realistic? He actively brings in the right projects and keeps the wrong ones out. During a project, he largely steps back: he monitors via status updates and automatic notifications, produces progress reports for management, and is the first point of contact when something goes wrong or changes — he flags overlap between projects and intervenes when progress stalls or quality comes under pressure. At the end, he ensures that the outcome actually lands in the right place within the organisation, whether follow-up work is needed and how that should be structured — and he critically evaluates whether a project that did not lead to implementation yields lessons for future decisions.
Definition of innovation goal of innovation
The PM defines the goal of innovation in two ways: on the one hand, scaling up concrete solutions that improve operations; on the other, spreading the innovative way of working itself throughout the organisation. For him, innovation is never “finished”; it is not about a finish line of completed projects, but about a sustained movement towards more innovation and more implementation. In this regard, a proven solution is only successful if it actually lands in the regular organisation — otherwise the project has not achieved its goal.
Decision making
Decision-making is layered and shared: the strategic innovation manager sets the overall direction and cuts through uncertainty when needed, while the PM coordinates and prioritises based on that direction (the innovation designer facilitates projects in terms of process). The most important decisions sit at the front end of a project — does it meet the ‘novum innovation method’ requirements, are we going to do this, with whom, and does it fit our way of working? Interim decisions about deviations from the method are made consciously and explicitly, not taken silently. An important insight is that informal decision-making carries at least as much weight as formal: the PM notes that people who have been kept well informed along the way are far less likely to reject a project at a formal decision point — good information provision is therefore itself a steering instrument.
Overview of what info
The PM maintains an information overview through a combination of his project management system (Jira), automatic notifications for deviations, monthly status updates from team members, fixed meeting moments, and informal channels. Within that overview, he wants to be able to see at a glance for each project: the current phase, the issue, the assignment brief, the client, the team members, start and end dates, and the most recent status update. His ambition is to develop this further into a system that proactively presents the right information to the right decision-makers at the right moment — not only for himself, but also for management above him. An explicit starting point is that the system must also be pleasant and easy for team members to work in: only if they actually use it will the information remain reliable. The biggest gap remains a searchable knowledge database of previous projects and lessons learned; currently that knowledge is scattered across reports, working documents, and people’s heads, which becomes vulnerable the moment someone leaves.
Monitoring progress
The PM monitors progress through defined project phases in which projects are actively tracked, supplemented by automatic notifications when a phase runs on too long or when no new work has been scheduled under a project for an extended period. Team members provide a brief monthly status update on where they stand, potential bottlenecks, and anything noteworthy. In addition, he reviews all ongoing projects together with the team in a three-weekly portfolio meeting. An explicitly mentioned wish relates to trend research. This is currently included in the portfolio, but not yet in a way he is satisfied with. They have discovered that trend research also follows a phased approach. He wants to incorporate the phasing of this trend research into his portfolio and make the interim decision points more concrete. This is, however, a matter of priority and time, and they intend to take it further at a later stage.
Sharing learnings knowledge
Important lessons are captured in status updates and incorporated into reports. In addition, they work with a “working deck” — a living document in which innovation designers and business members record results and processes from canvases and other tools. He acknowledges that the system is still immature. Knowledge is currently findable primarily through reports and the working deck, but this only works well if people update it consistently. A bigger problem is the dependency on people: when someone leaves the organisation, it becomes difficult to retrieve information and to make sense of it. He would like a smarter database that makes lessons more searchable — for example, to quickly surface relevant experiences from recent years when starting a new AI project. The main goal is to prevent duplication of effort in future projects. That point, however, has not yet been reached.
Communications relations within community
Communication within the project community is a mix of formal structures (stand-ups, portfolio meetings, monthly status updates) and informal channels that are at least as important — signals often come in through personal contact before they become formally visible. The PM acts as a central pivot with a broad relationship network, both internally and with chain partners. A crucial condition for good collaboration is that the right people are at the table: someone with genuine ownership and decision-making authority. A notable vulnerability is that much relational knowledge is person-dependent — when people leave, a gap opens up that is difficult to close through systems alone.
Systematizing collaboration replicating structural approach
Novum works according to a fixed methodology (design thinking + lean startup) with defined phases, but applies it deliberately with flexibility — every project is bespoke. The PM actively monitors whether new projects fit within that structure, and exceptions are only made with well-founded reasons; when such exceptions recur, they become a new “flavour” in the portfolio (such as the AI experiment track).
Role in the innovation process
The PM safeguards the quality and feasibility of incoming projects at the front end — his core question is always: the right people, the right issue, the right conditions? Once a project is underway, he largely steps back and monitors from a distance through automatic notifications, status updates, and informal channels. He only intervenes when there are bottlenecks or changes. His role is therefore explicitly facilitative and coordinating, not content-driven — he describes himself as the person who arranges the preconditions so that the team can do its work, and who ensures at the end that results actually land within the organisation.
Tooling needs
The PM needs tooling that does three things: proactively prepare information without constantly burdening people (filled as automatically as possible), flag in a timely manner when projects are stalling or going off track, and provide decision-makers at various levels with the right information at the right moment. A specific unmet need is a searchable knowledge database of lessons learned, so that when starting new projects he can quickly retrieve what has been done before. What he explicitly does not want is a system that serves only him — tooling must also work well for team members, so that they actually use it and the information remains reliable.
Time lost
The PM spends a considerable amount of time assessing and qualifying incoming projects — his first question is always whether the right people, conditions, and priority are in place. A notable time drain is retrieving knowledge from previous projects: without a proper knowledge database, he has to search through files and conversations to find out what has been done before. Finally, he spends time on reports for management and the strategic innovation manager, for which he has to bring together information from multiple sources.