In Part 2 of the PPM Master Class we look at improving your understanding of Project Portfolio Management and how it empowers the business.  To begin we will focus on what’s new about Project Portfolio Management, and how we can define it. Finally we will explore how PPM empowers the business and supports the project delivery process.

What’s new about Project Portfolio Management?

Project Portfolio Management is a shift in thinking from traditional project delivery, and challenges the narrow project-by-project orientated focus to planning.  Its successful implementation is driven from the top down, spearheaded by executive and senior management sponsorship and responsibility. Its drive is to bring the strategic and operational plans together to provide a single view of the organisation, helping the business to achieve its business strategy whilst optimising operational efficiency.

Project Portfolio Management straddles the gap between the projects themselves, the management process and their accountability to the business.  From a strategic viewpoint, the business can see which projects are delivering the organisations strategy. Whereas, from an operational viewpoint, managers are empowered with the tools, resources and accountability to successfully execute project delivery as part of the organisations overall strategy.

 

Empowering the Business

Simply put, PPM looks to empower the business, not just the project process. It helps the business establish a clear line of sight from the top right down to the individual project layer.

 

 

 

What is Project Portfolio Management?

PPM is not only about ‘doing projects right’; it is about ‘doing the right projects’.  Project Portfolio Management is about maximising the contribution of projects to the overall welfare and success of the business.

PPM is more than individual project selection, its about balancing the entire mix of the business’s portfolio of projects with long term, short and medium term projects,  low risk and high risk projects. Project Portfolio Management will provide visibility on failing or ill performing  projects before its is too late,  enabling the business to make subjective and informed ’go, kill, hold, fix’ decisions.

A typical mistake that many companies make is that they think that PPM is fundamentally the management of multiple projects – this is not so.

 

Defining Project Portfolio Management

So how do we define Project Portfolio Management, at Atlantic Global we like to summarise Project Portfolio Management as:

Project Portfolio Management  is the management of a collection of projects and programmes in which a company invests to implement its strategy.

Effectively, these project investments seek to directly contribute to realising the business corporate goals.

 

Supporting the Project Delivery Process

The business cannot manage the project mix without the management of the projects themselves. There is a  fine balance between the detailed management of the projects themselves and the portfolio perspective required to inform the business of their impact.

It is simply not enough for the business to manage the project mix without the management of the projects themselves

Project Portfolio Management is designed to integrate itself into the project delivery process by ensuring your company’s business objectives are being supported by the right set of projects. In addition, Project Management is critical to ensure that budgets, resource allocation, activity and work are accurate and delivered on time.  So in summary, both PPM and Project Management are required to ensure the right set of projects are selected and that they are delivered on time, within budget and scope.

What is critical is that PPM is a repeatable ongoing process of execution, analysis and course correction, and that PPM is an iterative process of communicating project delivery back and forth throughout the business.

 

Coming up in Part 2b

In Part 2b of the PPM Master Class we continue to extend your understanding of Project Portfolio Management by looking at the relationships between portfolio’s, programmes and projects and look at some of the barriers to implementing and consequence’s of not implementing PPM.

 

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