Politics and Portfolios

Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.

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As long as gut feel and political influence are favored over formal analysis and strategic discipline, the benefits of portfolio management will not be realized.

Portfolio management has emerged as the latest buzzword in project management. And certainly the promise is a positive one: a better understanding of your project budgets; improved allocation and management of staff; identification of interdependencies and risks.

But the challenges of project portfolio management are significant. While individual projects can be managed in relative isolation, the data management necessary for successful portfolio management requires significant investment in software, and integrating of that software with existing administrative systems.

In addition, there are policy and procedure considerations. Coordination of such a major change effort requires managing expectations of a diverse set of stakeholders, from human resources and accounting to the project managers throughout your organization.

But after all this change has been successfully accomplished, you'll be able to realize the benefits of a portfolio management, right? Probably not.

In my experience, portfolio management suffers from a fundamental failing. While it provides a means of better managing projects that are underway, it does little to address why these projects exist in the first place.

Above anything else, portfolio…

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