Where Does Portfolio Management Start?

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Business Case   Portfolio Management   Strategy  

If I asked any of you when project management began, the chances are that you would all provide a similar answer. The terms would be different, the specific first steps might vary slightly, but generally speaking there would be a common understanding of what constituted project initiation--largely because we are all familiar with the project management lifecycle, be it PMI’s or someone else’s. However, if I asked you when portfolio management started, do you think that there would be the same levels of agreement? I doubt it, and that’s because there is not yet a generally accepted initiation point for portfolio management.

I would also argue that the start of portfolio management is less crucial to success than the start of project management. For what I consider to be the first few steps of portfolio management, there can be a modular approach that allows organizations to “plug in” additional portfolio management functions as they are ready for them. However, let’s try and figure out where portfolio management might start in a perfect world.

Principles drive activities
To find the starting point, we have to begin by understanding what portfolio management is trying to achieve. At the most fundamental level, it is the management of the work that will deliver the organization’s goals and objectives. The portfolio is made up …

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