Project Portfolio Management is Big. Like, really big
I would like to share some of the realizations I’m making during my research on project management and the project management paradigm advocated by the Project Management Institute (PMI) . As someone who hasn’t managed projects for a living yet, I have a tough time painting a mental picture how projects and portfolios are managed. Specifically the size and resources it takes. Here are two points I would like to mention:
Both big and small businesses can benefit from project portfolio management, but large organizations might be more successful in adopting a project management paradigm
What I have come to conclude so far from the publications provided by the PMI and other sources is that, doing Project Portfolio Management is best done by multiple individuals instead of one person within an organization. Reason being that the vast amount of know-how necessary to come up with business strategies would be best done by multiple people so that more than one perspective is considered. The decision-making process also benefits from a project management team (PMO). Again, more people can bring up additional points of importance than otherwise done by one individual. This tip comes from the following article: “Portfolio Management in Small Companies“.
The big fish in project management nowadays, from the point of view of PMI, is to have a Benefits Realization Management framework (BRM) in place. This is at the center of PMI’s project management paradigm.
After realizing how broad this project management approach is, I think that larger companies might be more successful in adopting portfolio management paradigms of this scale. Simply because they have more employees, more resources, more money, typically have more projects thus a stronger need for structuring and prioritizing projects early and buy project management software to help manage it all.
There are many, many aspects to managing a Project Portfolio
Next, this whole project management approach has many points to consider. Think of roles, responsibilities, strategies, alignment, project scoring, project status checks, management plans, process group phases.
All of these points are just a handful of things that come into play when managing a portfolio.
I realize now that managing a project portfolio isn’t just about creating one document with all company projects and having one person ‘manage’ them by just asserting dominance over employees (yes, I’m stereotyping based on movies) . In fact, you might need an entire team to help you manage everything and so increase your chances of success.
Its an entire process where you involve upper management, stakeholders and sponsors early in the initial process.
There’s also planning. An extensive process on its own where all resources are identified and allocated strategically to be able to execute the projects in a portfolio. You need to involve the owners of each project.
Then comes the execution process. Gathering the right people with the domain knowledge to execute each project, all this while applying another process called Monitoring and Controlling. Obviously, as a business you want to periodically check whether your projects are getting done and are still going towards the right direction, all the while evaluating whether all project objectives are still relevant to the market when the deliverables are done and benefits have been created.
Lastly, even closing your projects require a dedicated Closing process. Documents need to be archived and sent to relevant parties. Corporate teams need to be reorganized or reassigned and the success or outcome of the projects need to be evaluated. These are just a few points I picked from a big bucket of things that need to happen.
I personally would definitely try to collect as much data as possible, before, during and after the entire process. This way I’ll be able to learn what worked and what didn’t.
The enormity of it all is completely new to me. I honestly don’t know yet which parts of the whole portfolio management are relevant to remember by head. If I would start managing some projects, I would do so by using all 3 books I bought for my studies as a cookbook. I would read the Process Groups step-by-step and gradually implement this management paradigm into my organization. I wouldn’t do it all at once either. I would train my prospective portfolio managers and other necessary PM (Project Management) roles, and myself, regularly so that we all know what to do and when to do it according to the PMI’s project management framework roles.
I wouldn’t want to do unnecessary things either, so I would try to tailor the management aspects of the projects so that it can be managed in the business context I work in.
Final Thoughts
I hope it becomes clear to me how portfolio management needs to be implemented in an organization that doesn’t do it with Benefits Realization Management in mind. It would also be great to discover how someone, with expertise in the project management field, can advice, convince or persuade organizations to adopt this kind of project management paradigm. On the other hand, as one of my lecturers said “you’ll also be discovering what are the things you should NOT do when managing project portfolios”, I hope to be able to determine for myself which aspects of project management are relevant to whom and when.