Creating a Portfolio Work Schedule

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  

When it comes to budgets, goals and project portfolio planning, 2011 has already begun. As you begin mapping resources to your organization’s prioritized work for the coming year, here are some important things to consider from a portfolio scheduling perspective.

Ultimately portfolio management is a process that ensures the scarce resources of the organization are allocated to the work that is more important. There are two major components required to carry this out. First, the executive team completes a planning process to determine which work is most important. Second, the portfolio managers (or staffing managers) must ensure that the right resources are applied to execute the work as efficiently as possible.

Once the portfolio managers have received the list of work that is prioritized for the coming year, they then have to create an overall schedule for the year that maps resources to the prioritized work. On the surface, this might seem like a daunting task. It certainly is challenging, but it is doable.

Portfolio managers don’t need to plan the work at the detailed hour-by-hour basis. They only need to keep track of the type of work, the number of resources required, the likely candidates to fill the openings, and the likely start date and end dates. As the year progresses, this portfolio work schedule is typically filled solid for one to three months, …

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