|
 |
Project Management for Business Success |
|
|
| Project Portfolio Management |
|
dd |
“Ensure your organisation
can select the right projects” |
Project portfolio management enables decisions to be made to select and review the projects and programs that best deliver an organisation’s strategy and enact its tactical objectives. It is fundamental to an organisation's success to optimise these decisions, as the projects and programs selected will define how the orgainsation will change to meet its challenges. Project portfolio management should assess and apply constraints of budget, risk tolerance, resource availability, time and organisational ability to absorb change to a prioritised set of projects and programs. |
EQuest Consulting has developed highly effective project portfolio management processes that we have helped organisations to adopt. These can be tailored to suit the culture of an organisation and the level of sophistication that will be accepted. The key to adopting new processes is successful change management, where we place a great deal of emphasis to ensure understanding and acceptance.
|
|
If your organisation is new to these concepts, we recommend starting with a simple process. When it is well understood and delivering visible benefits, the process can be matured incrementally over time to deliver greater levels of sophistication, with more pointed portfolio decision making and hence even greater benefits to the bottom line.
Getting project portfolio management right is a key to the success of any large organisation. It aims to achieve an optimum portfolio of projects that will maximize the benefits for the whole organisation, not just individual departments. It is therefore an enterprise level function, often facilitated by an enterprise project management office.
The process should start with a clear definition of an organisation’s strategy and tactical objectives. The outcomes required to realise the strategy and tactics are then determined, and finally the projects that will be required to deliver those outcomes.
There may be input from various departments with proposed projects. These need assessing on their merits for delivering the required outcomes, not individually in isolation of one another. Project portfolio management needs to examine the big picture and how the projects interrelate.
The first part to project portfolio management is portfolio selection. There is an ongoing part, portfolio review, which is conducted periodically to determine whether the portfolio is still the optimum mix of project. It addresses the inevitable, constant change of today’s world, providing an opportunity to start more urgent projects or stop rogue projects, or those that no longer deliver the outcomes needed.
As well as alignment to strategy and tactics, project portfolio management must also take into account:
- The overall level of risk that is being taken on in the mix of projects
- Ability of the organisation to absorb the amount of change
- Budget constraints, considering the funding available
- Resource constraints, considering the resources available
- Time and other dependencies, such as windows of opportunity, compliance deadlines, financial year end or busy periods.
|
|
|
|
