Skip to content

About this Center of Expertise

The traditional representation of projects, programs and portfolios is as a pyramid with portfolio management on top. This infers that portfolio management is a superset of project and program management — and, indeed, many of the “Portfolio Management Standards” have adopted this paradigm.

But, portfolio management is not a superset of project and program management but a subset of strategic management. Portfolio management is about governing the delivery of the strategy through projects and programs.

 

Projects and programs don’t “report” to the portfolio manager but to their Sponsor and Steering Committees. However, these projects and programs need to be directed, coordinated and managed as a set, to ensure they individually, cumulatively and optimally deliver the agreed business strategy (the 1+1=3 perspective).

Portfolio management therefore needs to report to the Strategy or Investment Committee, and is this Committee’s mechanism for ensuring the approved projects/programs deliver the strategy and, if they go off-course, they are either realigned or stopped.

Portfolio management ‘manages’ five key processes:

1               Investment management enablement and support process

2               Delivery resources planning, development and management process

3               Capability development and management process

4               Investment optimization, management and reporting process

5               Project enablement, support and optimisation process.

Missing from this list is any project delivery dimension. The portfolio management function does not have any accountability for project/program delivery per se. It is not part of the step-by-step project/program delivery process. Instead it is a governance role that equips, enables, supports, monitors and measures project/program delivery performance.

Whereas in some organizations these five portfolio processes are run by the same group, in other organizations, they are split between different groups with different titles, but the intended effect is the same.

While it has often been convenient to have project/program managers report to portfolio managers this is not a core portfolio management function. This reporting line shifts Portfolio Management from a governance role to a delivery role which is quite a different role altogether.

Learning Outcomes

Strategy Delivery

  • Validate and assess the organization’s proposed strategies so as to ensure that they are feasible, practical and will cumulatively deliver the planned business results.
  • Assess, plan and support the project portfolio to deliver the high-priority strategic and operational projects so as to maximize the improvement in business performance delivered through projects.

Prioritization

  • Identify the organization’s ‘strategic imperatives’ – the drivers of the successful delivery of the strategy – so that each project can objectively measure, justify and score its contribution to these imperatives and, thereby, quantify its level of strategic relevance as the basis for prioritization.
  • Thoroughly validate proposed project investments to identify early any gaps and deficiencies that can cause the project to fail to some degree or another so that these ‘seeds of failure’ can be remedied at low cost before the project is approved.
  • Track how the strategy is being delivered so as to identify strategies that are being under or over delivered or are being compromised (by poor delivery) so as to take early action to ensure the strategic results are fully delivered for the minimum practical cost.

Resource/Consultant Management

  • Manage and monitor the allocation and use of scarce key resources (and project managers where relevant) so as to ensure they are used effectively and are allocated to the highest priority projects.
  • Recruit, monitor and measure the retention of consultants and contractors so as to ensure the best value is obtained for the expenditure and that their outputs are acted on to deliver the recommended results and returns on consultant expenditure.

Project Success Management

  • Conduct thorough project/program health checks to identify problem areas that will compromise the delivery of the agreed desired business outcomes, benefits and value so that remedial action can be taken urgently or the project closed down if it is no longer viable.
  • Track and measure the execution of the project portfolio, identify problem projects early and take action to maximize the net return on investment across the portfolio over time.

Capability Development

  • Establish value-based tools, techniques and processes to deliver the strategy, project portfolio and available business value, educating executives and staff as necessary to maintain the requisite levels of competency and compliance so that waste is minimized and value is maximized.

Content

Portfolio Management COE clip

TOPics

Portfolio Management 101

Portfolio Management

  • Understanding Portfolio Management
  • The roles of the PPMO
  • Roles - Terms of Reference
  • Dealing with the Business
  • Policies

Value Management

Establish PPMO

Pre-Business Case

  • Corporate Portfolio Planning
  • Managing the Portfolio
  • Strategic Alignment Measurement
  • Scarce resources
  • Project Governance
  • Managing Project Managers
  • Project team
  • Scope management and control

Business Case

  • Understanding prioritisation
  • Project and Program Validation
  • PIC Submission Management

Portfolio Delivery Management

  • Managing External Resources
  • Portfolio Risk Management
  • Project and Program Health Checks
  • Cost and Value Management
  • Change Delivery Management
  • Project Governance Performance
  • Deployment management
  • Benefits measurement
  • Reporting

Capability Development

  • Capability Uplift Management
  • Information management
  • Learning and Promulgation

Preview

 

Subscribe

Subscription: USD$5,500 for 12 month's access.

SUBSCRIBE TO OUR Portfolio Management Center of Expertise