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10 Essential Steps to Portfolio Management

February 4, 2012 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management

10 Essential Steps to Portfolio Management
By Heather Champoux

Once you have a process down for defining, selecting and executing your portfolio, you are ready for the essential steps to Portfolio Management. Before we get into the actual steps, we need to make sure that the following assumptions are true:

  1. The organization’s Executive Management is onboard with the Portfolio Management Plan
  2. All proposed projects and work efforts will be evaluated for inclusion into the Portfolio
  3. The appropriate skilled staff is available to manage the Portfolio
  4. All Portfolio Management processes have been defined
  5. A standard tool (across the organization) is being used for Portfolio Management Planning

There are many published standards and white papers for achieving Portfolio Management within your organization. For the purposes of this document, we will be defining the 10 most essential steps based on our implementation experience over the last 12 years. More mature organizations will introduce additional steps into the process. Let’s get started:

Step 1: Identify Portfolio Items

Determine what project/work you would like to implement. This is not an individual effort; work and projects will most likely be identified by many in the organization.

Step 2: Define Portfolio Items

For this pre-selection round you will need to define enough information to establish value of the given initiative. Description/business case, benefits, strategic alignment, and risk tolerance are all factors to be considered for this step. Keep in mind some of the key evaluation metrics that we discussed above.

Step 3: Evaluate Portfolio Items

Once all of your items are entered into the Portfolio, it is time to evaluate them. This can be done through a variety of methods. For example, you may leverage a formula for rating your items against each other to determine which item will bring the most value, the least amount of risk, align best with your resources and provide the best alignment with your organization’s strategic objectives. Rating and scoring is a common Portfolio Management practice for portfolio selection. You may also introduce What-if Modeling to view various models and conditions should you approve a given portfolio.

Step 4: Select your Portfolio

Based on the evaluation step you will determine which items bring the most value to your organization. Once your key portfolio items have been selected, you will be entering one last evaluation stage prior to approving your portfolio.

Step 5: Reassess Portfolio

In this stage it is common for more detailed information to be added to the portfolio/work items. This stage allows the portfolio team to re-evaluate the items based on additional information such as a high level cost plan and/or resource plan.

Step 6: Approve Portfolio

Once the portfolio selection team has had time to reassess the portfolio based on further portfolio information, the approval process can begin. The approved items then go into an execution stage and is handed off to the project team for execution.

Step 7: Portfolio Item Transition to Projects or Work Initiatives

The approved portfolio items are then promoted to projects or work initiatives and are moved to the execution phase. At this point a Project Manager will be assigned if one has not been assigned already.

Step 8: Portfolio Communication, Performance Tracking and Reporting

Portfolio Management does not end with portfolio selection and approval. It is now time to track the performance of your portfolio. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) will be used to visualize status and track progress. For examples of useful Portfolio Management reports click here.

Step 9: Portfolio Change Management

At any point in the Portfolio Management life cycle, new project requests/portfolio items can be introduced. In addition to new requests, current approved items in execution can be affected by unexpected risks or unforeseen environmental factors leading to project cancellation. The change management step will be ongoing throughout the life cycle of your portfolio and is critical to its overall success.

Step 10: Begin at Step 1

As new portfolio items are introduced, start over at step 1.

Heather Champoux, PMP is currently the Director of Marketing for EPM Live. EPM Live is a global leader in Online Project, Portfolio and Work Management solutions. EPM Live’s award winning products have revolutionized the way organizations work today and continue to receive high accolades across the industry. With over 14 years of experience in Project Management marketing, system design, implementation and system/process training, Heather specializes in aligning customer needs with technology. Heather received her PMP certification in January of 2005 from PMI Global. Prior to EPM Live, Heather was a lead Program Manager for First American Interactive.

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