Portfolio Management Success, Essay Example

Portfolio Management Overview

To first understand what portfolio management provides to a corporation it is necessary to understand what the purpose and functions include.  Portfolio management is a function within project management to analyze each project based upon economic measures, strategic leadership guidance or regulation compliance.  Each project will have certain factors impacting the overall portfolio in which such factors are cost, consumption of resources, proposed timeframes, expected results and their corollary or contradictory nature among other projects in the business’ portfolio.  Portfolio management is a mix of art and science where costs economic impacts can be calculated quantitatively but the skill of measuring qualitative data impacts the overall project blend.  The goal of the portfolio manager is to create the optimal project mixture to create the maximum shareholder wealth with the minimal risk necessary (Levine 2005).

Trend on Implementation

Portfolio management is on an upward trend in terms of not only a business model adoption but also as a career option.  There is greater need for command and control of limited resources and businesses must understand their overarching impact of each project and how it may impact the business as a whole and other projects in the portfolio and the pipeline.  In the business world getting a product or service to market is a driving factor to success.  In regard to growth areas in the area of portfolio project management, information technology (IT) is enjoying the ever increasing competitive nature of business and their role in the ability to create a competitive advantage with technology.  The reason IT is on an upward trend is mainly based on the direct correlation between how we do business and how the consumer conducts their business decisions, buys, sells and research.  The music industry is a great example of how managing a portfolio of projects has helped create shareholder wealth and value.  As a company in the music industry there are projects around talent, creation, marketing, format, delivery, and sales just to name a few.  Each project in each of the sections are important but the company as a whole can only fun certain projects due to limited resources.  Getting the product to the consumer is of utmost importance so the projects in IT that provide the ability to download from an IT “cloud” environment was placed into the portfolio.

Portfolio Management Success

Management of projects in a portfolio is determined by the amount of successful projects, how they interrelate and ultimately achieving the strategic goals and objectives of the business.  Some success factors include linked benefits of all projects, objectives of projects to portfolio to business, managed resources and focus on quality, schedule and cost (Kendall and Rollins 2003).

Case Study Scenario

The case study scenario could use portfolio management to facilitate breaking down barriers amount the disparate functions.  Since multiple functions are impacted by the project it is important to roll up the multiple facets of the projects into one portfolio to gain better insight and enable a wing-to-wing approach to project management.  Understanding that the portfolio is backed by the CIO as stakeholder will give the group of projects as a whole a solid foundation for success.  All projects rolled up into the portfolio will be centrally commanded by the project manager (portfolio manager) and de-centrally executed by the functional groups.  The portfolio manager would create a project for each section such as sales, product fulfillment, customer service etc. and then have a representative to report the projects to the portfolio reviews in which a team would be utilized to ensure standardization among implementation projects and how the projects are integrated.  The portfolio manager will have insight, support and guidance during the portfolio lifecycle to ensure success for each section and the portfolio as a whole.

References

Bible, M. (2011). Mastering project portfolio management: a systems approach to achieving strategic objectives. Ross Publishing. 360 pages.

EPMC, Inc. (2011). Project portfolio management: a view from the management trenches. John Wiley & Sons. 256 pages

Kendall, G., and Rollins S. (2003). Advanced project portfolio management and PMO: multiplying ROI at warp speed. J. Ross Publishing. 434 pages.

Levine, H. (2005). Project management: a practical guide to selecting projects, managing portfolios, and maximizing benefits. John Wiley & Sons. 560 pages

Rajagopal. S., McGuin, P., and Waller, J. (2007) Project portfolio management: leading the corporate vision. Project Portfolio Management. 241 pages