Jargon Free Justification for Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

May 1, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Project Portfolio Management

Jargon Free Justification for Project Portfolio Management (PPM)
By Demian Entrekin

While there are plenty of subtleties in the field of Project Portfolio Management, I like to focus on some basic concepts. Arcane lingo and complex terminology doesn’t usually help people work together effectively.

So, here is the jargon-free justification for Project Portfolio Management (PPM):

  1. Somebody needs to know what projects are running currently and why.
  2. People in organizations need to work together to meet the needs of customers.
  3. Executives need to understand how projects get approved and funded, as well as how they turn out.
  4. Team members need to understand how to remain useful and not get overwhelmed.
  5. Project Managers need to spend less time fighting fires and more time making things better.
  6. Everyone needs to know how new projects get initiated, approved and executed.

Sure, we can get down into the dark regions of Earned Value and cross-project dependencies, but it might help everyone if project leaders figured out how to focus on the above first.

Demian is the CTO of Innotas. As founder and CEO, Entrekin oversaw marketing, product development, sales and services for the company. Today, he focuses on strategic product direction. Prior to Innotas, Entrekin co-founded Convoy Corporation and was Chief Architect of its initial products. In that role, Entrekin helped the company lead the middleware market with an annual growth rate of 670 percent and played an instrumental role in Convoy’s subsequent acquisition by New Era Networks in 1999. A recognized thought leader in Project Portfolio Management, Entrekin has published numerous papers on PPM and his blog (PPM Today) explores current issues related to successful PPM implementation. During his 18 year career, Demian has assumed leadership roles as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, delivering commercial and corporate database applications. Demian holds a B.A. in English from UCLA and an M.A. in English from San Francisco State University.

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