Project Portfolio Management

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Project Portfolio Management

Introduction

Project portfolio management is a term that is increasingly finding its use in the previous years. This is because conventional project management methods have usually resulted in gross inefficiencies and inconsistencies, rendering the projects ungainly in both the short and the long term. Good project management calls for completing the specific requirements of the project. However, when more than one projects are being handled by the team, several issues are raised which makes the situation very difficult. Management, therefore, of the portfolio level is required where portfolio could be described as a collection of different projects or programs. In order to accomplish this task, systems capable of generating status reports about projects must be established so that resources can be prioritized accordingly.

Ways will have to be devised which would help not only to prioritize and initiate those projects but also to identify them in the first place. A specialized portfolio manager is therefore required by the organization to observe and manipulate the elements of project management throughout the entire portfolio. He/she would be expected not only to reduce risk but also to probe for methods by which economic benefits could be achieved.

The article will try to attempt to discuss the possible challenges that area likely to arise and must be faced by the organizations during the implementation of IT project portfolio management. One of the most common problems is disruption of the usual business culture of the organization. This along with other problems has been discussed in this article.

Discussion

Before starting off with the formal definition of Project portfolio management (PPM), the author has deemed it fit that those three additional terms should be clearly defined. These three terms are necessary to be understood before going any further. For those who already have an idea of these terms, this would serve as a refresher for them. These terms are Project, Program and Portfolio.

A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. Comparing it with a project, a program is a collection of interrelated projects managed in a coordinated way to attain business objectives. Finally, a portfolio is defined as a group of programs and/or projects managed in coordinated way to support business strategy and to deliver benefits in line with strategic objectives (Levine, 2008).

Project portfolio management could be described as the management of various projects, programs or even portfolios on a centralized basis. This management is composed of various steps. These typically involve the identification, prioritization and the authorization of projects in order to achieve a set of well defined goals (Levine, 2008).

Project Portfolio Management calls for an extensive analysis of the project and due to this the project undergoes a few major changes. First of all, the lifecycle of the project increases. This is apparent because this process begins with the conception of an idea. These ideas could be screened for various objectives like business requirements and other targets. For IT projects, three phases have been defined to shortlist ...