Next Year’s Portfolio

Abid Mustafa is a seasoned professional with 18 years' experience in the IT and telecommunications industry, specializing in enhancing corporate performance through the establishment and operation of executive PMOs and delivering tangible benefits through the management of complex transformation programs and projects.

  ProjectsAtWork  

How many projects is your organization going to deliver next year? “As many as we can” is not a helpful or meaningful answer. In lieu of an established portfolio planning process, there are some techniques that can help a company calculate the number of projects and programs it can realistically handle in the coming year.

Every year there is a mad scramble by most companies to secure budgets internally for projects they intend to do for the following financial year. Typically, companies are flooded with requests from various departments to deliver capabilities and benefits through a variety of projects and programs. However, companies are acutely aware that there has to be a balance between the long wish list of things to do, and the organization’s actual ability to deliver them. Usually this leads to a onerous quest to estimate the number of projects and programs that can be delivered in a single year. In the absence of a workable corporate planning process (one that provides a prioritization framework to validate whether the right projects should be done or not) this becomes a daunting exercise for executives and their senior management teams.

Here are some techniques that, on their own or collectively, can assist companies to overcome this dilemma:

Establish a project filtration standard

Given the chance, business units will add anything to the company&…

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