AI Helps us Understand PPM

Both the "Jeff Oltmann PMI article" excerpts and the Wikipedia entry highlight several benefits of using Project Portfolio Management (PPM). Here is a comparison of these benefits, presented as a numbered list of common advantages, ordered by how early they appear in either document:

1. Aligning projects with strategic direction/plan: Both sources emphasize the critical benefit of ensuring athat the projects undertaken directly support the overarching goals and strategies of the organization. "PM Pf Management" states that good portfolio management increases business value by aligning projects with an organization’s strategic direction, and that PPfM is a funnel that connects strategic planning to project execution. Wikipedia also highlights the ability to align the decision-making process for estimating and selecting new capital investment projects with the strategic plan as fundamental to pipeline management, and that the value of projects can be demonstrated in relation to strategic objectives.

2. Making the best/effective use of limited resources: Efficient resource allocation is a core advantage of PPM according to both sources. "PM Pf Management" notes that good portfolio management involves making the best use of limited resources and that effective project organizations focus their limited resources on the best projects. Wikipedia states that PPM aims to determine the optimal resource mix for delivery and focuses on the efficient and effective deployment of an organization's resources.

3. Maximizing/optimizing the value of the portfolio: Both sources point to PPM's ability to enhance the overall return from the organization's project investments. "PM Pf Management" states that PPfM aims to maximize the value of the entire portfolio of projects to get the "most bang for the buck". Similarly, Wikipedia mentions that portfolio theories enable the optimization of portfolio benefits and that a key result of PPM is to decide which projects to fund in an optimal manner.

4. Balancing the portfolio/balancing risk: Managing the overall composition of the project portfolio is another shared benefit. "PM Pf Management" emphasizes the need to balance the portfolio across various dimensions like risk and reward. Wikipedia also notes that risk management at the portfolio level enables organizations to protect portfolio investments and balance the level of risk in the portfolio.

5. Increasing productivity: Improved efficiency and output are recognized benefits in both sources. "PM Pf Management" states that organizations combining effective PPfM with good project management achieve higher productivity. Wikipedia mentions that EPPM ensures the organization continues to increase productivity and on-time delivery.

6. Strategy that actually gets implemented/achieve strategic objectives: PPM helps in translating strategic plans into tangible results. "PM Pf Management" indicates that organizations with effective PPM see strategy that actually gets implemented. Wikipedia notes that PPM facilitates the scheduling of activities to best achieve an organization's operational and financial goals and helps demonstrate the value of projects in relation to strategic objectives.

Summary of PPM Benefits from PMI Site

Utilizing Project Portfolio Management (PPfM) offers several key benefits to an organization or a department within a company, as outlined in the sources:

• Increased business value through strategic alignment: Good portfolio management enhances business value by aligning projects with the organization’s strategic direction. PPfM acts as a "funnel that connects strategic planning to the execution of projects, making the strategic objectives executable". Each selected project plays a role in carrying out the organization's strategy, eliminating "pet projects". This ensures that the work being done contributes directly to the overarching goals of the organization.

• Optimal use of limited resources: PPfM enables organizations to make the best use of limited resources. It helps in focusing resources on the best projects and declining projects that are "good but not good enough". By making tough project selection decisions, organizations can avoid overcommitting resources and ensure that their capacity is directed towards the most impactful initiatives. This disciplined approach to resource allocation prevents the negative consequences of trying to do too much, such as delays, cost overruns, and poor quality across all projects.

• Building synergies between projects: PPfM facilitates the identification and management of projects in a coordinated manner, allowing for the building of synergies between them. By viewing projects as a portfolio, organizations can leverage interdependencies and ensure that related initiatives work together effectively towards common objectives.

• Improved decision-making and prioritization: PPfM provides a structured approach for selecting and prioritizing projects. It uses defined valuation criteria, such as Return On Investment, risk, efficiency, or strategic alignment, to differentiate between candidate projects and select those with the highest impact. This process ensures that trade-offs are made in a disciplined way, rather than being driven by subjective factors like the "loudest voice".

• Maximized portfolio value: The PPfM process aims to maximize the value of the entire portfolio of projects to achieve the "most bang for the buck". This involves selecting a combination of projects that, taken together, provide a high return on the organization's investment, whether in terms of dollars or other important measures.

• Balanced portfolio: PPfM ensures that the portfolio is balanced across important dimensions, such as risk versus reward, strategic versus tactical projects, market or product-line segmentation, and time to completion or profit. This prevents the portfolio from being lopsided and helps in managing overall organizational risk and achieving a mix of short-term and long-term objectives.

• Faster time to market, higher productivity, and less chaos: Organizations that effectively combine project portfolio management with good project management often experience faster time to market, higher productivity, and less chaos. By focusing on the right projects and managing them effectively, organizations can streamline their efforts and achieve results more efficiently.

• More predictable earnings performance: Effective portfolio management leads to more predictable business outcomes. For example, leaders in portfolio management have demonstrated significantly more predictable earnings performance compared to poor performers. This stability arises from a more strategic and controlled approach to project investments.

In essence, PPfM helps organizations to "do the right projects at the right time", leading to better strategic outcomes, more efficient resource utilization, and ultimately, greater business value.

Summary of PPM Benefits from Wikipedia

According to Wikipedia, Project Portfolio Management (PPM) offers several benefits to an organization, including:

• Centralized management of project management processes. PPM provides a framework for managing projects collectively.
• Enabling the determination of the optimal resource mix for delivery.
• Facilitating the scheduling of activities to best achieve an organization's operational and financial goals.
• Aiding in honouring constraints imposed by customers, strategic objectives, or external real-world factors.
• Providing program and project managers with the capabilities needed to manage time, resources, skills, and budgets for interrelated tasks.
• Offering a framework for issue resolution and risk mitigation.
• Providing centralized visibility to help planning and scheduling teams identify the fastest, cheapest, or most suitable approach to deliver projects and programs.
• Involving pipeline management to ensure an adequate number of project proposals are generated and evaluated.
• Fundamental to pipeline management is the ability to align the decision-making process for estimating and selecting new capital investment projects with the strategic plan.
• Focusing on the efficient and effective deployment of an organization's resources where and when they are needed, including financial, inventory, human, technical, production, and design resources.
• Allowing users to model 'what-if' resource scenarios across the portfolio.
• Facilitating change control through the capture and prioritization of change requests.
• Providing a central repository for change requests and the ability to match available resources to evolving demand within financial and operational constraints.
• Enabling the Office of Finance to improve accuracy for estimating and managing the financial resources of projects.
• Allowing the value of projects to be demonstrated in relation to strategic objectives through financial controls.
• Supporting the assessment of progress through earned value and other project financial techniques.
• Enabling an analysis of risk sensitivities residing within each project to determine confidence levels across the portfolio.
• Facilitating the integration of cost and schedule risk management with techniques for determining contingency and risk response plans.
• Helping organizations gain an objective view of project uncertainties.
• Enabling organizations to protect portfolio investments and balance the level of risk in the portfolio.
• Theories underline the importance of coordinating diverse elements to mitigate collective investment risks.
• These theories enable the optimization of portfolio benefits.
• Supporting the effective utilization and cultivation of limited resources.
• Ensuring the proper consideration of portfolio stakeholders.
• Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM) aims to prioritize the right projects and programs.
• EPPM can help ensure the organization continues to increase productivity and on-time delivery - adding value, strengthening performance, and improving results.
• EPPM helps to eliminate surprises by providing a process to identify potential problems earlier.
• EPPM allows organizations to build contingencies into the overall portfolio for greater flexibility in resource allocation.
• EPPM maintains response flexibility by providing in-depth visibility into resource allocation.
• EPPM helps organizations do more with less by reviewing processes, cutting inefficiencies, and automating workflows.
• EPPM aims to ensure informed decisions and governance by bringing together all project collaborators and data.
• EPPM helps to extend best practice enterprise-wide.
• EPPM assists in understanding future resource needs.
• A key result of PPM is to decide which projects to fund in an optimal manner through Project Portfolio Optimization (PPO).