If you are part of management for a large corporation, project portfolio management can give you closer control over the numerous projects which power your business.
Project portfolio management is a useful tool for any business or organization which wants to keep track of all their projects at once. In any given company, everyone within the firm all works in the same team, towards the same goal. To achieve that goal, businesses break the tasks into manageable, team-sized chunks. Somewhere at the top end of this task pyramid, someone needs to be in control. That’s the driving reason behind Project Portfolio Management.
What is Project Portfolio Management?
Otherwise abbreviated to PPM, this method for keeping track of your workload allows you to map out your entire business’s projects in one place. While project management oversees a single project from start to finish, PPM manages all the projects.
So, if your entire aerospace engineering firm were working on all the separate parts of one aircraft, but the company were making 150 aircraft overall in different facilities, then PPM oversees all 150 aircraft plus each of the component projects which will make it up.
What are the Benefits of Project Portfolio Management?
Now that you know what it is, you can turn your attention to learning why it makes good business sense. Here are the best reasons to invest in a PPM system for your company.
1 – Planning
Business speech for aligning your projects towards the same goal is to plan them as a pipeline. Your pipeline starts with the overall lead generating side of your company, then enters the bones of your operation.
Say you make hats, the pipeline would continue into your work room, on to your suppliers, and even branch out to your online presence. Each of these lines require planning in detail. If you can design a template for each pipeline, every project would have a standard set of instructions or goals… making your life simpler.
2 – Prioritization
When you plan early, you schedule faster. When a schedule is in place, you can arrange each project in seamless synchronicity. Think of building a house. You couldn’t decorate before you plastered the walls, etc.
3 – Monitoring
One of the main benefits of Project Portfolio Management is that you can use the software tools which will connect you to every level of management throughout the entire business. If an error flags up, you can relay that to the others. If you want feedback from a particular level, manager, or team, you can home in on them easily.
4 – Risk Assessment
Using this type of project management software, portfolio management allows for the anticipation of potential issues. Throughout the monitoring stage, you will learn what risks are imminent and which are unlikely.
If you operate a large group of projects, and if 1 of those groups encounters an unexpected error, proper portfolio management helps. You can gather data from the incident and use that data to develop a solution or prevention method for every other team.
Adjust to the New Parameters
Adjusting refers to your ability to both communicate with ground level management regarding the feasibility of a project, and acting on issues they raise. The employees who deal with the public or sales end of the business: those are the employees who know what works and what doesn’t. Listen to them and you will improve at every stage.
