What's your understanding of portfolio management and how do you think it differs from Programme management?
Imran ManirSenior Project ManagerBurton On Trent, United Kingdom
My understanding of Portfolios is that they are about investment decisions based on doing those projects (or other activities) that offer greatest returns at acceptable levels of risks. Portfolios are more about managing the balance of investments in order to achieve the business plan - therefore would probably include all of the organisations products and services.
Programmes, consist of multiple projects running in parallel or sequentially with a much greater degree of interdependence - all contributing to the same strategic programme objective.
What's your experience of portfolios and programmes and how would you distinguish between the two?
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Richard MaltzmanPortfolio Manager| EarthPM LLCAndover, Ma, United States
Imran,
I think you generally have it right. Portfolios are particularly focused on meeting a fundamental strategic goal of an organization. So a vehicle company may have an electric vehicle portfolio because it has set sustainability as a key strategic objective. As part of this Portfolio they may have new hybrid and electric car developments (programs) underway (in terms of product lines) - and each of these will of course have numerous component programs and projects.
They may also have other internal programs and projects to reduce waste and improve efficiency OVERALL as an operation. But they all fall under the strategic Portfolio of sustainability.
Wai Mun KooPMO Director| Intergraph PP&MSingapore, Singapore
Imran, you are right.
Portfolio management is talking about strategic decisions to focus on components within the portfolio that give the organization maximum ROI within the limited resources. It is at the strategical level of management and focus is on ROI.
Programme management deals with maximizing the benefits of a common a set of objectives at the tactical level. The focus is on benefit management across the dependencies of multiple programmes and projects. Saving Changes...
Andrew CotterellTransformation Manager| World Intellectual Property OrganisationGeneva, Switzerland
Sorry to join the discussion so late, but I think that this is an important subject that is often misunderstood.
Programmes are concerned wholly with the definition and achievement of business scenarios and objectives.
Portfolios are groups of (typically) related projects.
Projects have a clear objective and are constrained by time.
Thus: there may be a finance transormation programme which is intended to achieve coherence, transparency and compliance across an organisation. within this programme you may have a project to implement new financial software, a project to implement compliance rules etc.. Imagine that you also have an HR programme and a Supply Chain programme. If you then, for example, decide to implement a full ERP suite, the projects within it would probably be managed as a portfolio, since they are related but they are also driven by a mix of programmes.
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Bernard GorePortfolio, Programme & Project Professional| NZ PoliceWellington, New Zealand
There's certainly some overlap, but there are distinct differences.
A programme starts and ends - it may last a very long time, and the end point may be uncertain, but at some point everything it was set out to do has been achieved. A portfolio generally will be ongoing with no end.
A programme is a set of things (projects and other activities) that share some aspects - some shared goals/objectives, some inter-dependencies, often a significant amount of their resource. A portfolio will generally have items that have no such inter-relations, no common point except that they exist in the same organisation.
Because of the above, managing a portfolio is very different - how do you reconcile resource and funding contentions between projects trying to do things that are all worthwhile in their own way but may be changing the organisation in conflicting ways? With a programme it is quite simple - all parts are serving the same goals, at least some of them, so have a driver to co-exist. In a portfolio the same cannot be said. Saving Changes...
