Documenting the Organization’s Project Portfolio Management Process
February 5, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management
Documenting the Organization’s Project Portfolio Management Process
By Dr.Russell Archibald
In order to achieve the full benefits of modern project management each agency must have a documented picture of its overall project management process. This documented process:
- Describes how the organization’s project portfolios are related to the organization’s growth strategies,
- Identifies the basic types or categories of projects that exist or are planned,
- Defines the project life cycle for each project category,
- Defines, for each project category, the corporate guidelines for project risk analysis and project planning and control, with provision for appropriate adaptation for specific situations,
- Specifies the documents and related levels of approval authority for initiating and authorizing new projects and major changes to authorized projects,
- Identifies the key roles and defines their responsibilities and authority as related to project and functional management, and
- Specifies the procedures for escalating the inevitable conflicts (for scarce resources, priorities between projects and others) to the appropriate level for their prompt resolution.
This process is often documented as an overall flow chart with supporting narrative descriptions, together with appropriate references to pertinent agency policies, procedures and forms. When this is done properly the result is integrated project portfolio management.
Dr. Russell D. Archibald, PhD (Hon), MSc, Fellow PMI and APM/IPMA, PMP, is one of the six founding members of the Project Management Institute. Now semi-retired, he has many years of management experience in engineering and operations with a variety of major US corporations in Europe and South America as well as the US. He has made major contributions to the understanding of project management, is author of the best selling 2003 book “Managing High-Technology Programs and Projects” (published also in Russian, Chinese, and Italian), has trained more than a thousand program and project managers and project specialists around the world, and has consulted in project management to clients in 14 countries on 4 continents. E-mail: russell_archibald@yahoo.com. Website: www.russarchibald.com.
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