Manage Your Project Portfolio

Manage Your Project Portfolio

by Johanna Rothman
Released August 2009
Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
ISBN: 9781934356296

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Book description

Too many projects? Want to organize them and evaluate them without getting buried under a mountain of statistics? This book will help you collect all your work, decide which projects you should do first, second—and never. You’ll see how to tie your work to your organization’s mission and show your board, your managers, and your staff what you can accomplish and when. You’ll get a better view of the work you have, and learn how to make those difficult decisions, ensuring that all your strength is focused where it needs to be.

Table of contents

  1. Manage Your Project Portfolio
    1. Copyright
    2. For the Best Reading Experience...
    3. Table of Contents
    4. What Readers Are Saying About Manage Your Project Portfolio
    5. Foreword by Ron Jeffries
    6. Foreword by Tim Lister
    7. Preface
    8. Chapter 1: Meet Your Project Portfolio
      1. What a Project Portfolio Is
      2. See the High- and Low-Level Views
      3. Now Try This
    9. Chapter 2: See Your Future
      1. Managing with a Project Portfolio
      2. Managing Without a Project Portfolio
      3. What Are Your Emergency Projects?
      4. Lean Approaches to the Project Portfolio
      5. Why You Should Care About the Project Portfolio
      6. Your Portfolio Reflects Your Influence Level
      7. Now Try This
    10. Chapter 3: Create the First Draft of Your Portfolio
      1. Know What Work to Collect
      2. Is the Work a Project or a Program?
      3. Organize Your Projects into Programs As Necessary
      4. Organize the Portfolio
      5. Using Tools to Manage a Portfolio
      6. Now Try This
    11. Chapter 4: Evaluate Your Projects
      1. Should We Do This Project at All?
      2. Decide to Commit, Kill, or Transform the Project
      3. Commit to a Project
      4. Kill a Project
      5. How to Kill a Project and Keep It Dead
      6. Killing a Senior Manager’s Pet Project
      7. Kill Doomed Projects
      8. Transform a Project
      9. Now Try This
    12. Chapter 5: Rank the Portfolio
      1. Never Rank Alone
      2. Rank Order the Projects in the Portfolio Using Points
      3. Leftover Points Provide Metadata
      4. Rank the Projects by Risk
      5. Use Your Organization’s Context to Rank Projects
      6. Who’s Waiting for Your Projects to Be Completed?
      7. Rank the Work by Your Products’ Position in the Marketplace
      8. Use Other Comparison Methods to Rank Your Projects
      9. Don’t Use ROI to Rank
      10. Your Project Portfolio Is an Indicator of Your Organization’s Overall Health
      11. Publish the Portfolio Ranking
      12. Now Try This
    13. Chapter 6: Collaborate on the Portfolio
      1. Organize to Commit
      2. Build Trust
      3. Prepare for Collaboration
      4. Set the Stage for Collaboration
      5. Facilitate the Portfolio Evaluation Meeting
      6. How to Say No to More Work
      7. Fund Projects Incrementally
      8. Never Make a Big Commitment
      9. Discover Barriers to Collaboration
      10. Who Needs to Collaborate on the Portfolio?
      11. Now Try This
    14. Chapter 7: Iterate on the Portfolio
      1. Decide When to Review the Portfolio
      2. Select an Iteration Length for Your Review Cycles
      3. Defend the Portfolio from Attack
      4. How to Decide If You Can’t Change Life Cycles, Road Maps, or Budgets
      5. Make Decisions as Late as Possible
      6. Now Try This
    15. Chapter 8: Make Portfolio Decisions
      1. Keep a Parking Lot of Projects
      2. Conduct a Portfolio Evaluation Meeting
      3. Conduct a Portfolio Evaluation Meeting at Least Quarterly to Start
      4. Review Your Decisions
      5. Now Try This
    16. Chapter 9: Evolve Your Portfolio
      1. Lean Helps You Evolve Your Portfolio Approach
      2. Choose What to Stabilize
      3. Stabilize the Timebox
      4. Stabilize the Number of Work Items in Progress
      5. Fix the Queue Length for a Team
      6. When You Need to Fix Cost
      7. Management Changes When You Stabilize Something About Your Projects
      8. Now Try This
    17. Chapter 10: Measure the Essentials
      1. Measure Value
      2. What You Need to Measure About Your Projects
      3. Measure Project Velocity: Current and Historical
      4. Measure Cumulative Flow for the Project
      5. Measure Obstacles Preventing the Team’s Progress
      6. Measure the Product Backlog Burndown Chart
      7. Measure Run Rate and Other Cost Data, If Necessary
      8. Don’t Even Try to Measure Individual Productivity
      9. What You Need to Measure About the Portfolio
      10. Measure Capacity by Team, Not by Individual
      11. People Finish More with Lean and Agile
      12. Now Try This
    18. Chapter 11: Define Your Mission
      1. Define the Business You Are In
      2. What Good Is a Mission, Anyway?
      3. Define an Actionable Mission for the Organization
      4. Draft a Mission from Scratch
      5. Brainstorm the Essentials of a Mission
      6. Refine the Mission
      7. Derive Your Mission from Your Work
      8. How to Define a Mission When No One Else Will
      9. Beware of the Mission Statement Traps
      10. Test Your Mission
      11. Make the Mission Real for Everyone
      12. Now Try This
    19. Chapter 12: Start Somewhere…But Start
    20. Chapter 13: Glossary
    21. Bibliography
      1. You May Be Interested In…

Product information

  • Title: Manage Your Project Portfolio
  • Author(s): Johanna Rothman
  • Release date: August 2009
  • Publisher(s): Pragmatic Bookshelf
  • ISBN: 9781934356296