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PPM 101: Fundamental Metrics
Tom Mochal, PgMP, PMP, TSPM is the president of TenStep, Inc., a methodology development, consulting and training company. Tom won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the Project Management Institute for his work spreading knowledge of project management around the world. He is a speaker, lecturer, instructor and consultant to companies and organizations around the world.
Gut-feel or anecdotal evidence is not sufficient in determining how your portfolio is performing. The process of defining, capturing and analyzing meaningful metrics can be difficult and time-consuming, but the effort can improve work processes and communication with management. Here is a list of fundamental metrics to get started.
Done right, project portfolio management can do a lot of good for any organization. But it’s not easy, as many companies, large and small, have discovered. In PPM 101, an ongoing series by veteran project management consultant and author Tom Mochal, we focus on the fundamentals for organizations that are just getting started on the PPM path.
As you create and manage your project work portfolios, you need to continuously determine their efficiency and effectiveness. In some cases this value discussion will be based on gut-feel and anecdotal evidence. However, it is important that you also develop some qualitative measures that get to the essence of how well or how poorly you are doing. Some of these, such as your budget reports, are usually readily available from your Finance department, and many of these metrics will need to be calculated and tracked within the portfolio.
Make no mistake, the process of defining, capturing and analyzing metrics can be difficult and time-consuming. However, this effort will help …
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"Thus the metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimeter bullet." - Dave Barry |