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Primary Portfolio Management Processes
Dr. Andrew Makar is an IT program manager and is the author of the Microsoft Project Made Easy series. For more project management advice, visit the website TacticalProjectManagement.com.
The previous article provided a high-level overview of a portfolio management framework. This article will provide an overview of the primary portfolio management processes highlighted in yellow in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Primary Process Layer
Portfolio Planning
The portfolio planning process identifies opportunities and develops the initial business case for candidate projects. The process is used to filter all the different IT recommendations and establish a baseline cycle plan for the following year. Participants gather opportunities and develop an initial list of projects and programs. Since these ideas can result from brainstorming sessions, wish lists and high level analysis, the list needs to be filtered.
Current business strategies and trends are used to filter the initial list. For each viable opportunity, a preliminary risk assessment is conducted and the total cost of implementing each initiative is estimated to further refine the list of projects and programs. The list is then scored by business value and risk to generate a candidate project/program list. Once a candidate list is developed, a high-level business case is developed for each candidate to be evaluated in the Portfolio Prioritization process. Table 1 lists key inputs, steps and outputs:
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Inputs
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