The Myths and Realities of Project Portfolio Management

Our founder, Kent Crawford, gave a great talk on real-world project portfolio management at this year’s PMO Symposium. Kent’s twist is that there’s a lot of breakthrough performance in the real-world. What you need to do is simple, but not easy.

Here are my quick takeaways from his talk:

• Building scalable portfolio governance has great bang for the buck: one of our clients was able to increase the scope of its portfolio coverage without increasing the size of its staff. The consequent value returns from proper project selection and benefits realization is a double-digit CAGR, easy.
• Verizon's portfolio governance impresses: The 2012 PMO Of The Year winner works through prioritization and reprioritization of over $1 billion in project value monthly. Maintaining that consistent cadence is how the agile PMO ensures strategy drives projects.
• Improved cross-pollination between financial and project portfolio management: As Kent noted, our colleagues in finance have knowledge and experience that’s invaluable. It’s gratifying to see advanced PMOs leveraging that capability.
• Leave the language of project management behind when talking portfolios: Kent put it like this: “Don’t walk in to an executive portfolio meeting with a copy of the PMBOK® Guide under your arm.” The language of project management does not go far when we need to talk strategy. They are completely different disciplines, so master the language of portfolio management!