Project Portfolio Management

Organizations are beginning to recognize the comprehensive power that Resource Management has for addressing how to manage projects and project portfolios.

What makes Resource Management so powerful is that it lies at the heart of both PPM and Project Management.

To put it simply, the daily operations of an organization revolve around executing initiatives to achieve the corporate vision. There are two criteria for meeting that end: doing the right projects and doing the projects right. Doing the right projects is the goal of Project Portfolio Management (PPM), and doing the projects right is the goal of Project Management. These two entities, then, are the foundational basis for accomplishing the mission of your organization.

Resource Management in Practice

Think of Resource Management in terms of an airline planning its flight schedule for the day. Deciding the specs of where the planes should go and at what times and with how many passengers is analogous to Portfolio Management. Resource Management is at the core of this planning and optimizing process because you would have to know how many planes are available at what time, how many pilots are scheduled to work that day, and so forth.

Likewise, managing the project itself—getting the plane to its specified destination efficiently and on time—is also centered around Resource Management. The right combination of pilots, flight attendants, gasoline, and so on are all required for the project to take off. They all need to be available at just the right time, for the full duration of the project with variables (eg: due to an employee’s illness or a plane’s maintenance) tracked and accounted for. All of these considerations fall under the purview of Resource Management.

The Theory of Resource Management

The above analogy oversimplifies things, of course, so let’s apply all that to the theoretical framework of Project Portfolio Management.

The initiation, planning and execution phases of project and portfolio management have parallel activities and considerations with Resource Management bridging the gap between the two.

First, in order for a business case to be developed at the portfolio level, projects need to be scoped, which requires a high-level estimate of resources required.

Then, in order for projects to be prioritized at the portfolio level, the requirements need to be outlined at the project level to develop a cost benefit analysis (CBA). In order to do this, the resources need to be further defined, which again requires Resource Management to achieve.

Finally, once projects are underway, project governance at the portfolio level requires monitoring and controlling at the project level. This entails tracking actuals of the resource usage, analyzing and variances therein, and reporting on these, as well as escalation to and response from project governance team as necessary.

All of this hinges on Resource Management. Again, since PPM and Project Management are the basis for accomplishing the mission of your organization, Resource Management’s role as a keystone between the two makes it the Holy Grail of corporate strategy and execution.

Resource Management has long been seen as the biggest obstacle in effectively managing project portfolios, but that is changing.