E-maginative - Project portfolio management

How can an organisation ensure that it only undertakes the most useful, most valuable projects?

The answer for many organisations has been Portfolio Management.

Put simply, Portfolio Management is a suite of management processes, tools and techniques operated across the entire organisation that ensures the right projects are undertaken at the right time with the right resources.

Principles of portfolio management

There are four main principles of portfolio management:

• Fit - the initiative needs to be aligned with the organisation's strategy
• Utility - under closer analysis and refinement, the organisation needs to assess the usefulness of the initiative in terms of its value, business commitment, 'deliverability' and risk
• Balance - the organisation needs to balance its project portfolio in terms of risk, timescale, resourcing, funding, organisational change and duration. Clear prioritisation is also required
• Monitoring delivery and tuning - once the portfolio is in progress it is crucial that it is monitored effectively and any corrective action required is taken early on e.g. re-allocation of resources, re-prioritisation of projects, or stopping projects altogether.

Portfolio management framework

Alongside the principles of portfolio management, organisations need to establish a coherent framework for managing their portfolio. This should include:

• Pipeline management - identifying and assessing planned and future initiatives
• Resource management - planning and ensuring optimum use of staff
• Schedule management - assessing when and how an initiative can be delivered
• Delivery management - management of the initiatives currently being delivered
• Exception management - taking informed decisions to instigate remedial action where necessary.

Advantages of portfolio management

Organisations can derive the following advantages from portfolio management:

• Increased value delivery through a strong balanced portfolio
• Better use of resources focused on higher value projects
• Greater visibility and control over major projects
• Increased flexibility around key decision making
• Major improvements in benefits realisation.

For an informal discussion about your requirements contact us and discover how we can deliver portfolio management within your organisation.