Adopting a Project Portfolio Approach

Projects coming out of your ears? Don't know where to start?

When I was working at a global company as a Contractor, I saw that they had projects all over the place. 

Projects were initiated by Group, by EMEA, by the UK. And it was chaos. Everyone running around trying to deliver individual projects but with no understanding of dependencies, resource conflicts and overarching strategy.

There was no holistic view, no understanding of what was critical vs. nice to have. There was limited awareness of resources, with the same people trying to deliver multiple projects. 

It made my head hurt. I was itching to create order so I did. In my spare time(!), I created a Project Portfolio strategy.

I reviewed all the projects, I mapped out business bottlenecks, grouped projects into logical portfolios (e.g. Tech, People, Business), identified dependencies, built a prioritisation matrix (speed vs ROI vs spend etc.) and evaluated risk.

Finally we could see the whole picture. It allowed us to understand what projects were critical, which projects supported local and global strategy, and delivery feasibility based on time and people.

A project portfolio approach ensures every effort serves your wider strategy. It balances risk and value across all initiatives and ensures every project, programme and team is working towards a unified goal.

Do you have a project portfolio in place or are you running projects as isolated tasks?