Put the Portfolio First in PPM

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Put the Portfolio First in PPM
PowerSteering (February 16, 2009)

Too many organizations emphasize the “project” part of project portfolio management at the expense of the portfolio. But project execution means little if you’re not working on the right projects.

As the first “P” in “PPM” suggests, the practice of Project & Portfolio Management often represents nothing more than an outgrowth of project management. Once the volume of projects and project managers achieves critical mass, the concept of portfolio management emerges from the rather basic organizational challenge of managing a lot of moving parts at once. In this evolution, PPM is simply project management in the aggregate: a means to track a large number of projects and people at one time. This “bottom-up” perspective informs the way many organizations both conceptualize and deploy PPM.

The problem with this model is that it puts too much emphasis on the wrong “P.” Optimizing the quality of project execution means little if the organization is not working on the right projects in the first place. To deliver the most benefit to the organization, the primary focus of PPM must be on the portfolio – a “top down” approach. Projects that are both on time and on budget but are misaligned with strategic goals or redundant with other work in the organization represent nothing more than corporate waste.

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