Renee GalligherIT Project Manager 3, PMP, ICP| Idaho State Board of EducationMeridian, Id, United States
I've been offered the position of portfolio manager and am looking for input from those of you who do this. I see this as a great opportunity to leverage off my past experience of program management - managing multiple projects, evaluating them as to their impact on the bottom line, prioritizing them based on ROI for the company, as well as business objectives, and of course tracking. I know there is much much more, but I would love your feedback and advice. Thank you! Saving Changes...
First of all, I believe congratulations are in order!
Now, I would like to ask you if that Portfolio management position is within the same company you're currently working for. If you are already doing Program Management now, it's safe to say your company has a high enough level of PM maturity, which will allow you to do your job as a Portfolio Manager. Now, if the offer comes from a different company, be sure to check what their idea of project management is! You cannot manage a portfolio unless the company sees projects as investments, and therefore handles them like investments. If you risk ending up in an environment where projects are treated like wild adventures in the Far West, with Projects Managers riding off in the sunset without a map, and developers shooting their patches from the hip, I would recommend a bit of careful consideration before taking the job.
Another thing to consider, and I don't mean to dampen your enthusiasm by pointing out all the bad stuff, is that you'll need a strong tolerance for politicking (or an efficient method for stress-relief, or a good shrink). Even if you are in a proper, high PM maturity environment, there will be times when all the data, facts, and common sense will tell you one thing, and your boss or his boss or higher up the chain will decide otherwise - because someone's pet project is being pushed forward, or because a request might raise too much dust and it's "better" to kill it before more problems are unearthed, etc. It gets frustrating some days, so, be ready to find a way to deal with this.
Of course, there are also days where the job is fun in its own way, so if it really is what you want to do, I wish you the best of luck! Saving Changes...
Mark Price PerryBusiness Driven PMO Evangelist| BOT InternationalOrlando, Fl, United States
Renee, congratulations..! One tip that I would pass along would be to sit down with and get to know your finance folks. In particular, understand the different kinds of currency that your organization has. By that I mean, revenue dollars, cost dollars, and expense dollars are all different kinds of dollars. A common mistake of many portfolios is not understanding and representing this in terms of a common currency. Just imagine the following two projects. Project A has a benefit in the form of ongoing increased revenues of $5m and project B has a benefit in the form of ongoing decreased operating expenses of $2m. Assuming all other factors are equaly, one might initially think that $5m is greater, hence better, than $2m. Dollars to donuts, unless your NEBT is very high, the $2m project is the better of the two. For many organziations, financial accounting is very complex and as a portfolio manager I wouldn't attempt to master it, rather I would seek to get the lay of the landscape from the finance org pros. Best of luck in your new assigment. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
My path into portfolio management has been very similar to yours. You’ll get some very seasoned input from others on this forum. I’ll share some thoughts from a person moving into the role in the last couple of years
1) You will have far more influence potential than you understand at first. Use it carefully to take you in the right direction. If you don’t know the direction, start your work there.
2) Immerse yourself in the contemporary literature regarding PMO’s and portfolio management (Mark Perry humbly did not mention his books. Consider them essentials)
3) You listed several key roles of the portfolio manager, all of which are valuable. However, I would suggest that an even more valuable role is for you to leverage Lean methods to improve the flow of business value. Every portfolio manager should read Donald Reinertsen’s The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development
One my reasons for looking into portfolio management came about because of my passion for the significantly improved results using agile-lean methods. I knew in my heart that those methods could be scaled to the enterprise level. Part of my search for others who were thinking the same way led me to a group working on the Scaled Agile Framework . If your orgnization is considering or usuing agile methods, take a look after you get settled in.
Saving Changes...
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
The advices given by others are good and there is not much I could add except that I would like to highlight one more point. Although you can come up with various things you need to do for portfolio management, it is always better to discuss with the business and understand their requirements and expectation just to avoid any surprises. The key focus would be on the criteria for project selection and how to translate those criteria into something that you can easily measure and quantitatively evaluate. Saving Changes...
Renee GalligherIT Project Manager 3, PMP, ICP| Idaho State Board of EducationMeridian, Id, United States
Thank you to all. I apologize for the delay in responding. First I was out of town, then upon my return, the workload has kept me busy. Not the workload with the new task, though. Thank you to all for your contratulatory remarks! I will be tasked with not only maintaining the the projects I currently work on, but also the role of portfolio manager. My first meeting is today on the scope of this position. I understand the basics of portfolio management but need to learn much much more. The position will be with my current employer.
Julien - formally we do not have a program management office or position. There are three project managers, soon to be a fourth, with the various assignments handled by one of these persons. We track everything in MS Project Web App, but are currently not tracking, nor have entered values for resources or projects. I know that in order to measure each project, we must do this. As a state agency, each project is tracked and measured based on its value, but this is currently done outside of MS Project. I foresee that the setup to make this work will be a huge undertaking. Am I right?
Politicking? I really do appreciate the comments because that already happens and I can imagine that it will be just as prevalent in this position.
Mark - I appreciate your practical financial management advice. My goal is is determine exactly what will be measured in order to determine exactly what I need to do. I will be certain to look up your publications!
Rich - I appreciate your advice and comments as well. As for Agile, not that is not the direction we use here, but everything is "due yesterday", so although Waterfall is what is valued, I know enough about Agile, but little about Lean, that I will research it, with the reading recommendations to glean everything I can.
Wai - Your advice is the approach I was initially planning on taking - finding out specifically what will be measured, what is it they want to see with the measurements and of course how often.
Thank you all for your input. Additional advice is appreciated and if I've got any other questions, I'll be back! Saving Changes...
Renee GalligherIT Project Manager 3, PMP, ICP| Idaho State Board of EducationMeridian, Id, United States
I've since met with the IT Director and the information that is wanted from Portfolio Analysis is impact on resources. Budget tracking is not the focus right now, till we mature in this process later. The focus is to be able to show the Chief of Staff given the current budgets, each person/programmer has to work ## of hours per work. This information is to backup what we know but need to prove, that resources are inadequate to meet the current established deadlines. I'm anticipating that reporting on resource impact on all the projects as a whole is probably pretty straight forward once I add all the projects into a portfolio to determine their impact on one another, but with that said, this is a basic MS Project function without the Portfolio Analysis function, correct? Saving Changes...
