PMOs and Preparing for Next-Generation Portfolio Management

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.

 

Over the past few years, portfolio management has become an increasingly important part of an organization’s project delivery approach. The importance of linking strategy with execution is now well understood, and portfolio management has been a key tool in making that link a reality.

Inevitably, organizations are now looking to take things further, and portfolio management is an area where there are significant opportunities to improve. For many organizations, portfolio management is still a somewhat isolated function—connected to project execution, but only loosely tied to annual planning and project selection, and rarely integrated with other corporate functions like resource, finance and technology planning.

That’s going to change as organizations move to become more “portfolio driven”—the portfolio will become the hub of all change planning and management in the organization. That will inevitably impact the PMO, and that’s what I want to look at here.

Next-generation portfolio management
To understand how PMOs need to adapt, we have to understand the basics of how portfolio management will evolve. Currently, portfolio management’s ability to deliver more effective project execution is limited by the lack of influence over other areas of the organization.

For example, unless resource planning is working to deliver…

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