Effective Project Management: Traditional, Adaptive, Extreme, Fourth Edition

Chapter 20. Project Portfolio Management

He who attempts too much seldom succeeds.

—Dutch proverb

A good way to outline a strategy is to ask yourself: "How and where am I going to commit my resources?" Your answer constitutes your strategy.

—R. Henry Miglione, Oral Roberts University, An MBO Approach to Long-Range Planning

Organizations that invest in information technology projects, whether hardware-focused, software-focused, or both, must have a plan for investing in these projects. The dollars needed to fund these projects almost always exceed the dollars available. How should an organization decide which projects should be funded and which shouldn't be funded? Is this a short-term decision that looks only at the coming budget cycle, or is there some long-term strategy that spans multiple budget cycles? How can the funding agency determine whether an IT investment is a good investment? Can some criteria be applied?

The answers to these questions are simple in some cases and extremely difficult in others. This chapter uses a life-cycle approach that traces the life of a project through the portfolio management process.

Introduction to Project Portfolio Management

In this first section, I set the foundation for our exploration of project portfolio management. While everyone knows what a project is, not everyone may understand that not all projects come under the purview of the portfolio management process. Just what types of projects will be candidates for the project portfolio is a very ...