Client Snapshot
The City of Hobart is the capital city council of Tasmania, responsible for delivering infrastructure, services, and community programs to over 50,000 residents. With a focus on long-term planning and sustainable urban growth, the council manages a capital works portfolio exceeding $36 million annually.
The Challenge
Although the City of Hobart had invested significant time and resources into implementing a project portfolio management (PPM) system, the platform was failing to deliver value. It was clunky, unintuitive, and underutilised, with only a small number of staff actively engaging with it.
The council did not operate a dedicated PMO. Instead, PMO-type activities sat within the Project Delivery function. Without a centralised governance framework, the PPM system lacked oversight, alignment with project processes, and broader staff engagement.
Key Barriers
- Low adoption and engagement Staff continued to use spreadsheets and manual workarounds
- Poor user experience The system was difficult to navigate, discouraging adoption
- Unclear alignment with council needs Configuration didn’t support capital works governance or reporting
- Limited integration with decision-making Executives lacked reliable portfolio insights to inform strategy
Our Approach
Innover Solutions was engaged to assess whether the existing PPM system could be improved or needed replacement. We delivered a comprehensive, collaborative engagement focused on improving adoption, usability and strategic value.
- Conducted stakeholder workshops across all departments involved in capital works delivery
- Facilitated executive-level discussions to capture leadership needs and reporting expectations
- Analysed system architecture against council processes and governance requirements
- Redesigned core workflows to align with capital delivery and approval processes
- Worked directly with the software vendor to fix foundational design issues
- Delivered enhancements iteratively over 10 x 3-week sprint cycles
- Captured ongoing user feedback to ensure practical improvements were landing well
The Outcome
The transformed system is now embedded as the council’s primary project and portfolio delivery tool.
- 100% staff adoption: The platform is used organisation-wide for project tracking and delivery
- 60+ capital works projects ($36M portfolio) actively managed in-system
- Real-time portfolio visibility for the executive team, replacing spreadsheet-based reporting
- Improved usability: The system is intuitive and aligned to staff workflows
- Embedded governance: The tool is now central to council’s planning, approvals and reporting
- Stronger capability: The Project Delivery team can manage governance, streamline approvals, and support long-term capital prioritisation
Partner Perspective
Innover helped us turn a disconnected tool into a solution our teams actually want to use. The process was practical, inclusive, and directly aligned with how we deliver projects at council.
Mao Cheng
Manager Capital Projects
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