PM ADVISORY:

Project Portfolio Management – The Art of Saying “No”

Part 5 of 5: Building Portfolio Monitoring and Governance

by Jeff Oltmann
Portland, Oregon, USA

Not Done Yet

Effective project organizations say “no,” declining to do some worthy projects so they can focus their limited resources on only the very best. Narrowing their focus to a smaller portfolio of projects makes the remaining projects more successful.

Previous articles in this series described how to build a good portfolio of projects using the discipline of project portfolio management (PPM).

1. Identify strategic drivers of the portfolio.
2. Use agreed-on criteria to distinguish the best candidate projects from the rest. As quality pioneer Joseph Juran famously urged, “Separate the vital few from the trivial many.”
3. Construct a balanced portfolio that delivers high value, uses resources efficiently, and aligns with strategy.
4. Validate that the portfolio is feasible to execute using the resources and skills that are realistically available.
5. Initiate the projects, handing them off to program and project management.

See Figure 1 for a quick review of the portfolio management process that I covered in previous articles.

By the time they have reached this point, the portfolio management team has accomplished much. Starting with fuzzy concepts and project proposals, they have created an active, integrated portfolio of projects. However, their job is not done. They must monitor the portfolio, manage changes and tradeoffs across projects, and ensure that a governance framework clearly establishes responsibilities. This article addresses those issues.

To read entire paper(Click Here)

About the Author Jeff Oltmann, PMP Author Jeff Oltmann is principal consultant at Synergy Professional Services, LLC in Portland, Oregon, USA. (www.spspro.com). He is also on the graduate faculty of the Division of Management at Oregon Health and Science University. His specialties include strategy deployment, operational excellence, and project portfolio management. Jeff is a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience managing successful technology programs. He ran the Program Management Office (PMO) and a $60M project portfolio for IBM’s xSeries development facility in Oregon. Jeff’s hands-on program management experience includes program budgets over $100M and worldwide cross-functional teams of over 100 members. Jeff welcomes your questions and ideas. You can contact him at jeff@spspro.com or read previous articles at www.spspro.com/resources.htm.