Learn The Critical Elements of Project Portfolio Management

The standard for portfolio management offers the generally acceptable practices for programs and projects, to help them meet an organization's strategic objectives. Portfolios are collections of active projects, programs, and other work going on at a given point of time. Managing these is important, since it helps control the components of the portfolio, assists in the identification and assessment of the individual programs and projects, and helps people involved prioritize the components in such a way to best use available resources.

As the concept of project management gains in acceptance, we need to start looking at the natural followup - portfolio management. The big issue here is making sure we do the right work the right way, because executing projects without a documented set of processes, or a handbook on how to manage project portfolios, can lead to real problems. Fortunately, it's not that hard to avoid disaster by using a set of standards for portfolio management.

Portfolios encompass all the functions of an organization, other than strategic objectives. This includes marketing, human resources and finance, making portfolio management an important and effective way to govern corporate activities. Set standards for portfolio management provide a guide to professionally acceptable practices in managing portfolios. This kind of standard offers the same kind of guidance previously given to project management in other standard sets, and will help improve efficiency and reduce the risk, cost, and complexity of projects.

So, how can an IT organization put together a portfolio management of its own? It depends on the standard you're using. Some fail to explain the methods of setting these portfolios up. However, a good standard will spell out good practices for managing portfolios and programs, and will help manage the risk associated with project portfolios, as well. If you want to implement the best practices in the field, using a standard of this type is definitely a good idea. There are lots of different options available, from purchasing industry portfolio management standards to developing your own, and your organization's requirements are going to dictate what will work best for you.

Make sure all your IT efforts add value to your bottom line. Instantly be able to see what everyone is doing, and prioritize your projects correctly. Manage resource effective, and easily measure and demonstrate results. A good IT governance and portfolio management solution can help you do all these things. Take the time to find out more about portfolio management, and see what it could do to help you organization prosper. You won't be disappointed.

Innotas Inc. is a leading provider of Enterprise Project and Portfolio Management Services. They were featured in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Project and Portfolio Management in 2009. Find out more about Innotas' focused PPM services today.