Project or portfolio management
Although project, programme and portfolio management are all now relatively well defined fields of activity, interestingly they are not all at the same level of maturity within our organisations.
Project management is about “doing things right” and portfolio management is about “doing the right things”. As managers and consultants we should be discussing which activities you should be spending your time on and where to direct your management attention more effectively. And not spending valuable energy on how well something has been done. By focusing on portfolio management rather than on project management you can have much more of an impact.
It is easy to identify improvements in current project management practice if you have years of professional experience. While it is useful to understand how the processes, systems and tools interact, focussing only on them will not reap the rewards of improved portfolio management.
Portfolio management is a discipline requiring boldness. It involves you in engaging customers; it requires hard decisions to be made often with limited information, and it requires those decisions to be made in the full view of senior members of the organisation. Not for the faint-hearted.
Despite these challenges, improving your organisation’s portfolio management has a business impact far in excess of the limited gains that come from focusing on project management.