Common Good

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.

  Portfolio Management   ProjectsAtWork  

Are all your resources working toward the same overall goals and strategies? Do people and departments know what is important to the organization? Do they have incentives to get there? Here are three criteria for prioritizing and approving work in a portfolio.

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.

Consider the ABC Corporation. The various departments within ABC are struggling to achieve their main initiatives. No wonder. At a high-level the CEO and executive team want the company to reduce costs to better compete against foreign competition. However, that message is not always reaching the rest of the organization.

The Sales Department is focused on increasing revenue by implementing new products. These new products may cost the organization more money in the short-term. They also want to upgrade their Sales IT Systems to support a number of new initiatives. The Sales Department would like to move faster but they say the IT Group is holding them back.

Manufacturing is focused on building more capacity to support increased sales (…

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