The Coming Irrelevance of On Time, On Scope, On Budget

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.

  Benefits Realization   Portfolio Management   Strategy  

In my last article, I suggested that project managers who focused on projects that were aligned with an organization’s discretionary budget should be referred to as “sub-portfolio managers”. I’ve used that term a few times in presentations recently and it can be somewhat provocative, so I thought that I should take some time to explain what I meant and to outline how I think that evolution is going to happen. I’m not referring to all projects here, but specifically to the projects that are selected to be part of an organization’s strategic portfolio--that is, the projects that are approved with the purpose of contributing to one or more of the organization’s goals and objectives for the next reporting period.

To understand the concept, we need to first go back to how those projects are selected. As part of annual planning, an organization will develop a number of proposals that outline the project and provide high-level estimates of the costs and benefits that are expected to result. Based on those proposals or business cases, a number of initiatives are approved and then have to be executed in order to deliver increased revenue, decreased costs, greater market share or any number of other advantages that align with the organization’s priorities.

Throughout the project selection process, the focus is always on the costs…

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.