Project portfolio management (PPM) is defined as the process used by project managers and project management organizations (PMOs), and its main job is to deal with the analysis of the potential benefits of undertaking a project. This process utilizes many sub-tasks during its application, such as Data organization, Data consolidation, etc. These sub-tasks take care of all the data that are involved with the current and proposed projects.
Project Portfolio Management deals with various important responsibilities, such as business forecasting and business analysis.
Process of PPM
Project Portfolio Management helps to centralize the management of an organization's projects. The theme of the projects may or may not have a common link. Project Portfolio Management mainly interferes in the project intake process for the organization. The intake process for a project has many sub-parts under the Project Portfolio Management, such as the Project Potential Identification and Analysis, Authorization Management for Potential Project, Project Assignment to Authorized Project Managers, etc.
Need for Project Portfolio Management
Project portfolio management software provides various tools for a series of projects organization or organizing various programs into a project portfolio. Project portfolio management software allows managers to accumulate essential data related to the potential and current projects undertaken by your organization.
Benefits of Project Portfolio Management
1. Project Selection Process Improved
Project portfolio management helps in the selection of the ideal set of projects for your organization. The selection process is based on the various goals or objectives for the business, risk factors, availability of resources, and other criteria. Project portfolio management helps in the evaluation and selection of the project that is predicted to deliver maximum value to your organization. The evaluation process involves a combination of many qualitative and quantitative techniques that help in simplifying the project portfolio management. The techniques used include methodologies for ranking the project progress, scoring models for project progress graphs, and other heuristic methods. Project Portfolio Management makes the final decisions based on relevant and well-defined criteria rather than uncertain factors.
2. Big Picture View
While dealing with various issues in the project development process, an organization may deviate from the originally decided upon goals for the project. Because of this, the timeframe of completing the project keeps getting pushed back unnecessarily. Due to the increased timeline, many facts assumed as accurate at the start of the project may not be so anymore, such as the cost of resources used, dwindling of required resources, etc. Project portfolio management helps in countering this. It makes tough managerial decisions while keeping the long-term goals in mind.
3. Focus on objective business goal
A significant amount of blame for organizational failure falls upon the lack of clear goals or objectives. It hinders the project progress evaluation as the necessary targets and milestones are missing. The organization can get side-tracked by personal projects or short term benefits of the hype behind the latest industry trend that may attract attention, rather than focus on long term benefits. Project portfolio management helps in ensuring an open work culture that promotes the intention of business first in the organization.
4. Collaboration over the competition
Often, in the organization, many different teams may end up competing over the same resources due to their different objectives. Project portfolio management helps in the management of such challenges. It takes care of aligning your projects with the long-term strategy decided for the organization. A meticulous and standardized approach is employed by Project portfolio management to evaluate the various demands of the functions of the project. Project portfolio management helps in the elimination of various redundancies that exist in a project. It results in a better collaborative environment for various teams in the organization.
5. More efficient use of resources
Another major reason for organizational failure in various projects are resource dependency and the mismanagement of resources. Resource planning and management can be difficult when deciding whether to allocate resources based upon the project chosen or to choose the projects based on the type and amount of resources you can commit to the project. Project portfolio management promotes a more rounded approach to resource management. Project managers continuously monitor the resources allocated to the projects and evaluated to decide upon an optimal resource management path.
6. More accurate project performance data
Continuous monitoring and evaluation of the project are some of the core values of Project portfolio management. Project portfolio management tools help in linking high-level portfolio data with on-the-ground project indicators. The tools help in further assessing the portfolio performance to see if it is along the predicted graph of progress. Project portfolio management establishes performance thresholds and tolerance levels. It helps in identifying many potential project trends that may have a negative influence on the project portfolio and end up preventing the achievement of project objectives.
7. Increased timely project deliveries
Teams working on projects do their best to achieve the project progress in line with the expected progress graph. However, many unseen and unknown factors influence the parameters that define how the project will turn out. In the overall analysis of project progress, it has been determined that a significant amount of projects are unable to be completed on time due to many unexpected problems such as underperformance of employees, project costs, etc. Project Portfolio management helps in strategy formulation and execution for various projects. It is one of the core principles behind Project Portfolio management.
8. Decreased organizational risk
Project portfolio management provides a holistic view of the entire project portfolio rather than looking at individual project risks. Monitoring the risk versus return profile or the project helps achieve it. It makes the organization prepared for various contingency plans in the case of unexpected scenarios. It also helps in devising the foundational framework that allows for the growth of an evolved risk management strategy for the project portfolio.
9. More informed decision-making
Decision taken by the higher-ups of an organization affect the entire project progress overview. Project Portfolio management helps the decisions be the best and informed ones through continually challenging the status quo with monitoring and analysis of objective data. It also encourages decision-makers to employ the use of data-centric tools to help them in the decision making process.
10. Increased ROI
It is always the goal of any organization to aim for increased returns: whether in the form of financial, operational, service-based, or regulation/compliance-based. Project Portfolio management helps in predicting the possible returns through the analysis of the objective data provided on the project progress and potential. It helps in improving the probability of the project's success, increasing the predictability of returns, make cost-saving decisions for the projects more swiftly and decisively, and gain improved Return on Investment for the efforts put into the project.
Best Project Portfolio Management Software and tools
1. PlanStreet
PlanStreet is a top-notch Project Portfolio Management Software. PlanStreet gives you many tools to benefit project managers and their teams while working on their projects. The tools provided by PlanStreet include Kanban Boards, Scrum Boards, and Gantt Chart, etc. PlanStreet and its Project Portfolio Management tools help in handling the projects of varying size or complexity. It ensures high compatibility with multiple project types and OS platforms. Its high quality and automated tools allow you to focus on managing your team rather than working about the project compatibility with the software. You can manage projects using PlanStreet on the go, from anywhere at any time.
Trello has a very simple workflow management system that handles the project portfolio framework. Its tools help the teams to constantly analyze the project in real-time and track the tasks executed in the course of the project. It helps in simplifying workflow management through the use of Kanban-style Boards. You can easily track the updates of the project progress by the software. Trello provides tools that are best suited for small projects and ongoing tasks.
It's a pretty powerful Project Portfolio Management Software that works to offer you all the features that you expect from a quality online Project Portfolio Management Software. It contains inbuilt time-tracking and timeline views for various projects. It also helps you in coordinating with its mobile app, which enables you to manage your projects on the go from anywhere. The tools provided include interactive Gantt charts, visual reporting, intuitive interface, real-time collaboration, activity and workload views, time tracking, financial management, and scheduling. You can use it for managing projects of any size.
JIRA had its breakthrough achievement as a cross-platform bug and issue tracking based software that boasts of advanced project management capabilities and features. However, with changing times, the software evolved to its current form. JIRA is suitable for companies of any size and project priority. JIRA core still refers to the various tasks as issues. It promotes the sharing of information and seamless engagement amongst teams. It allows the filtration of Kanban boards by due dates and priorities. It also provides multiple options for report type of project progress. Its functionality makes it highly preferable for small teams.
Asana is a useful Project Portfolio Management Software that helps in live or real-time tracking of the project progress and the activities of team members working on it. It is suitable for working with small to medium-sized projects. It provides a lot of collaboration and communication potential while working on a project. It has a very clean, intuitive, and easy to handle user interface. It is simple and easy to understand functionalities make it very easy to plan various projects and track the project progress constantly. You can even set alerts for automatic updates on the projects that you are interested in and provide helpful comments on the shared project progress. The task dependencies and evaluation make it easier to control your impulsive task choice so that you may not end up picking a task that is way over your head.
