LWL Director

Efficient Portfolio and Resource Management at LWL with Blue Ant

The Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe (LWL) is one of Germany’s largest public-sector employers, with around 20,000 staff members. LWL provides essential services for the municipalities in the Westphalia-Lippe region – including 35 special needs schools, 21 psychiatric clinics, care centers and numerous administrative units with approximately 5,500 employees. The Organisation Development department acts as an internal service provider for strategy, project and portfolio management and supports cross-departmental initiatives.

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Flexible Project and Portfolio Management with Blue Ant

To manage an increasing number of projects and the complexity of parallel tasks, LWL implemented the multi-project management software Blue Ant. The goal was to replace heterogeneous tools and Excel-based planning with a unified, transparent system for project steering, resource planning and portfolio oversight.

A key success factor was the pilot approach in Organisation Development, which allowed LWL to introduce Blue Ant step by step before expanding into additional departments. The implementation was carried out almost entirely using Blue Ant’s standard configuration – ensuring scalability, maintainability and a smooth rollout.

“Excel simply couldn’t answer questions like When can we start a new project? or What happens if a key staff member is absent?,” explains Ulrike Grieß, Project Manager at LWL, responsible for operational portfolio management. “Blue Ant now gives us reliable, up-to-date data that helps us react quickly, identify bottlenecks and keep the entire project landscape in view.”

LWL uses Blue Ant particularly for:

  • Portfolio Transparency – A unified project portfolio with structured, comparable status reports

  • Resource Planning – Clear visibility of planned resources despite constraints from employee representation guidelines

  • Dashboards & Reporting – Instant insights for managers at any time

  • Standardized Processes – Clear tasks for project managers, documented centrally in the wiki

  • Step-by-Step Scaling – A low-cost pilot setup with future expansion options built in

A major advantage lies in the gradual change management approach. Project managers and leaders were trained in short, targeted sessions. Dashboards were configured together with managers to ensure immediate value. This created strong buy-in and a quick shift toward consistent usage.

As a result, acceptance grew rapidly: Within one year, the number of active project managers increased from 19 to 50, and the project landscape expanded to 150–200 projects. Additional departments are already testing Blue Ant in sandbox environments.

Today, LWL sees Blue Ant as a central platform for strategic project alignment, portfolio steering and effective resource utilization – without Excel chaos or disconnected tool landscapes.

Landschaftsverband Westfalen-Lippe
"Blue Ant gives us instant clarity on capacities and overloads. We save time, reduce costs and place resources exactly where they are needed."
Ulrike Griess

Ulrike Griess

Project Manager, Organisation Development

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