Change Management at the Portfolio Level

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Change Management   Organizational Project Management   Portfolio Management  

Everyone probably recognizes that portfolio management is a fairly complex discipline. The easiest example that I like to use is portfolio resource management. It needs to ensure that all of the key initiatives are appropriately resourced while avoiding over- and under-utilization. It needs to anticipate shifting resource skill and experience needs over time, and plan to address those with hiring, outsourcing, contracting, skills development, and so on. And it needs to retain flexibility in resources to allow for the inevitable pivots and adjustments that are going to be needed on a regular basis.

And of course, resource management is just one of numerous variables that must be managed within a portfolio, with each of those variables impacting a number of the others. It’s no surprise that powerful strategic portfolio management software has become increasingly popular over the last few years. Neither is it a surprise that a lot of investment in AI capabilities is occurring around that software.

Yet there is still one aspect of portfolio management that I feel is under-appreciated, and as a result, less than ideally managed. That’s the idea of change management.

In a portfolio context, that’s the concept of ensuring that all of the portfolio initiatives are capable of being implemented into the business and absorbed effectively and efficiently. That&…

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