The Portfolio-Driven Hub: PMO 2.0?

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.

  Governance   Organizational Project Management   PMO   Portfolio Management  

In my previous article PMOs and Preparing for Next-Generation Portfolio Management, I suggested that organizations would be evolving to become more portfolio driven—that is, centralizing all non-operational work under a portfolio umbrella and establishing the portfolio as the driving force behind that work, not just as a consolidation and reporting tool.

In that article, I looked at the need for more comprehensive and integrated relationships to be developed between the PMO and business areas to create a foundation for that portfolio-driven approach to build on. In this article, I want to take that idea further and consider how the PMO can establish itself as the hub of the portfolio-driven concept, acting as the central function driving all non-operational activity.

Let’s begin by defining what we mean by that statement of “driving all non-operational activity”; I can see how it could be inflammatory. Simply put, a portfolio-driven organization breaks work down into two categories: operational work that reflects the daily business of the organization, and change that is focused on improving how those operations are conducted.

All of that change work is driven from the strategic portfolio, and that’s where the need for a central function comes in—a group that will manage and control that work. That doesn’t mean a central, …

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