Portfolio Change Control

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.

  Change Management   Governance   Portfolio Management   Strategy   ProjectsAtWork  

Change at the portfolio level involves complex decisions and greater risk. It is challenging enough without the burden of unnecessary churn that disrupts legitimate change. Here’s a look at what drives portfolio change, and ways to minimize churn, from the planning cycle to ongoing communication and visibility.

Change management is one of those inevitabilities that project and program managers deal with every day. Between the initial scope definition and planning and the final delivery of features, there will be any number of unexpected events, shifting priorities and new opportunities that initiatives have to go through if they are to stay relevant. This has long been recognized, and change approval boards are an integral part of any project or program governance model.

But what about at the portfolio level? If a single project isn’t expected to deliver without experiencing a number of changes, then surely there must be a tremendous amount of change driven into a portfolio. Frequently there is, but even more frequently there is an absence of appropriate management of that change.

What drives portfolio changes?

Before we can start considering how we manage portfolio change we need to define what it is, or perhaps more accurately, what drives it. A portfolio is far more complex than a project and consequently the drivers of change are also more complex. While …

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