The Politics of Portfolio Management: Why It’s Harder Than It Looks
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.
Portfolio management is one of the concepts that, on the face of it, organizations should naturally want to embrace. Most executives and project managers alike will acknowledge with little prompting that many of their challenges go beyond just the project level. Competition for resources and funding, too much work underway and pressure to address both operational and project responsibilities all speak to the need to make more effective project choices. Once this need is recognized, the concept of portfolio management quickly emerges as a logical direction to explore.
The principles of portfolio management are extremely straightforward. At its core essence, portfolio management addresses three fundamental questions:
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Are we doing the right projects?
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For the projects that we have chosen to undertake, are we confident that the projects are being delivered well and meet their goals?
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For the projects that we have completed, are we consciously changing how the organization operates in order to realize the value we expected?
While these are entirely reasonable questions, and relatively simple ones to ask, the answers are more complex and involved. How do we know we are doing the right projects? What criteria do we apply? What judgments do we make? Right projects as compared to what?
It is the initiation of …
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