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Janis is an award-winning journalist and editor who has covered many industries beyond project management, including health care, financial services, higher education and retail sales.

  Governance   ProjectsAtWork  

You know how to manage your projects. Now you need to know what projects to manage. That's portfolio management.

In project management circles, it's almost cliche to feel overwhelmed and overworked, with too many projects and little clarity on what to do first. For project managers, that's just the way it goes. As for their employers, it's a major reason why so many projects seem to never begin—or end—much less deliver the intended goal. But more organizations are starting to challenge the assumption that their projects must live in chaos, with the emerging process known as project portfolio management (PPM).

If project management is about how to work on projects, PPM is about what projects to work on. "Project portfolio management is important because it helps an organization focus on the vital few projects versus the interesting many," says Steve Weidner, vice president, program management at Program Navigators, a consulting firm based in Bellevue, Wash.

The concept of portfolio management has roots in financial services. A money manager considers an investor's goals, analyzes his assets, then tries to balance risk and reward to achieve the highest return. The translation to project management: A company considers its business strategies, studies current and potential projects, then sets priorities and allocates resources to achieve the greatest benefit…

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