The Speed Racer and 9 Other PPM Pitfalls

  Estimating   Governance   Portfolio Management   ProjectsAtWork  

From ambiguous reporting to overambitious estimating, here are 10 all-too-common missteps to avoid in the quest for a successful strategic project portfolio management process.

Portfolio management requires a combination of the right processes and the right technology to support it. Portfolio management is a process. This process must improve over time. Without improvement, any process, even if it is state of the art at the time it is introduced, will eventually become overly bureaucratic or outdated.

The unfortunate fact is, there are a number of high-level mistakes that many organizations continue to make when implementing their strategic project portfolio management process. Based on research, interviews and analysis that produced the book Strategic Project Portfolio Management: Enabling a Productive Organization, here are 10 examples of common bad practices and recommendations for how to avoid them.

1. The Speed Racer. A sense of urgency is a helpful thing when you’re trying to achieve a full project portfolio management system; however, full-on haste is not. In order to ensure implementation is smooth, be sure all of the required changes are completely understood before making them. When broad adoption across a large group of people is required, a phased approach can make the required process more manageable.

2. The Information …

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