Project Portfolio Management: A Primer (Part 1)

Frank Winters has more than 30 years of consulting and Information Technology experience serving as a project/program manager, consultant and IT service industry executive.

  Portfolio Management  

In an attempt to convince you that it might be worth your while to learn more about PPM, here's a list of benefits. Just knowing that these benefits might be achievable should help you if you're a project manager--especially if you manage more than one project at a time--starting today!

PPM helps you:

• Improve fiscal management
• Improve communication between IT and business management
• Quantify the benefits of your project
• Decide how best to assign resources
• Set priorities
• Identify and manage risks
• Assess the impact of adverse events, predicted or not
• Sell your concept and get funding for your project!

New terminology tends to confuse people. When I was a new project manager back in the Paleolithic era, nobody seemed to know what the term project management meant. In fact, I don't think the buzz term systems development lifecycle was widely used yet either. Even today in this enlightened and thoroughly modern age, some people in the business world still allow themselves to be confused by these and other basic terms.

PPM is yet another term that has caused confusion. Let's briefly define it. But it's not an important concept if it doesn't provide tangible benefits--so this article is focused on the benefits of PPM.

What is PPM?

First of all, what do we mean by portfolio? …

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