How does a project portfolio office go about answering the question of what value does the portfolio provide the organization? There are bunches of obstacles to creating and maintaining a set of projects that can deliver the most benefits to the enterprise.

Project Management Portfolio Office Challenges:

- Chaos in the external environment

- Clashes in the executive suite

- Competency in the portfolio office

Portfolio offices are staffed by senior project management professionals assisting business leaders in steering the funding of the organization to respond to the chaos in the external environment, politics and personalities in the C-suite, and they may not be prepared to understand the details of the content of the projects or the mechanics of portfolio data analysis. Whew.

We can help by understanding business needs, ensuring those needs are included in the business case for portfolio selection, and creating forums for portfolio alignment. Yup – I’ve done these things.

But what is really the answer to surviving a job in a project management portfolio office? I believe that in large part it is a focus on outcome management. This is a phrase coined by my peer in the industry, Russ McDowell. We need to help an organization identify the key measurements that drive the health of the organization. Next, we identify how projects support improvement of those metrics.

What are the key outcomes your organization needs to manage? Vote Now! Enter your vote below:

Copyright 2009 PM Perspectives LLC Rosemary Hossenlopp PMP

There is a key issue in the project management industry. What? Well, it is no secret that many projects can’t answer this important questions well; what value do you provide the organization?

I want to start a discussion on Organizational Project Management. What is that? There is momentum in the industry that somehow we should better align project work with the needs of the organization. Compare it to a bridge between project work and operations. Someone needs to be a toll keeper to monitor the traffic that gets to use this bridge.

And, by the way, who is responsible to be a toll keeper on this bridge? There could be a couple of answers:

- Project managers responsible for getting the work done.
- Program managers responsible for coordination among projects
- Portfolio managers responsible for intake of the projects and measurement of the health of the project work.
- Business managers responsible for the project funding decisions
- The organization that has to use project results.

Do you have any examples of great projects or great companies that have a clear definition of which of these groups should be the toll keepers for Organizational Project Management?

Oh, and by the way, do you even like the name Organizational Project Management?

Would love to hear from you