Portfolio Management: The Last Resort of the Powerless
Mark Mullaly is president of Interthink Consulting Incorporated, an organizational development and change firm specializing in the creation of effective organizational project management solutions. Since 1990, it has worked with companies throughout North America to develop, enhance and implement effective project management tools, processes, structures and capabilities. Mark was most recently co-lead investigator of the Value of Project Management research project sponsored by PMI. You can read more of his writing at markmullaly.com.
Portfolio management is an incredibly awkward and ill-defined process, largely (in my view) because of who is responsible for defining it. And for the most part, those behind the implementation of portfolio management are not the ones in charge. In fact, in many instances, those that endeavour to encourage implementation of portfolio management do so with the specific--if unstated--intent of reigning in those who are in charge. For portfolio management, if we are really honest, is the last resort of the powerless.
One can understand where this comes from, of course. Many organizations, and many resource managers, struggle in a world where there is far too much work relative to the capacity available to get the work done. Customers and sponsors don't deal with the hard decisions about what is essential and what is merely important. Projects struggle with teams comprised of the “usual suspects”, where critical team members are dedicated to not just this project, but 20 more just like it. Project managers struggle with getting on the radar of senior management. The whole ideal of working in a project-oriented world just isn't, if we're honest, living up to its promise.
What to do about this conundrum? Why, to judge by many organizations, the best possible answer would appear to be the implementation of portfolio management.
As discussed in …
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"Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves." - Bertrand Russell |
