"Why Corporate Leaders Should Make Project Portfolio Management a Priority"
The Business Case for Project Portfolio Management
by Jim Pennypacker, Director of the Center for Business Practices, PM Solutions and Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin, Editor-in-Chief, Center of Business Practices
Let’s be blunt: No one would think of building an office complex by turning 100 different construction teams loose to build 100 different rooms, with no single blueprint or agreed-upon vision of the completed structure to go by. Yet this is precisely the situation in which many large companies find themselves when managing projects. Companies routinely over-schedule their resources (human and otherwise), develop redundant projects and damage profitability by investing in non-strategic efforts that won't contribute to organizational health.
The evolution from project to portfolio. While most decisions on the project level are concerned with tactical issues, decisionmaking on the portfolio level is concerned with strategic issues. Today’s emphasis on project portfolio management (PPM) is part of a trend towards systems thinking in organizational life. Instead of tweaking the parts (individual projects, departments or processes), systems theory encourages us to look first at the whole: the enterprise. As organizations get more skilled at project management, their focus shifts from planning and execution to the front-end of the project management life cycle: how to choose the correct projects, prioritize them, track the prioritized projects and ensure adequate resources to staff the projects. This front-end work is PPM, and it is as necessary to projects as each project is to the portfolio.
As organizations get more skilled at project management, their focus shifts from planning and execution to the front-end of the project management life cycle: how to choose the correct projects, prioritize them, track the prioritized projects and ensure adequate resources to staff the projects. This front-end work is PPM, and it is as necessary to projects as each project is to the portfolio.
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