ICT Project Portfolio Management
Total management of the project portfolio
Are you capable of orienting your projects towards your organisation's strategic objectives? Do you have a well-balanced project portfolio? Are you still wasting time and money on projects that have no added value for your organisation?
Many organisations fail when it comes to allocating investments to strategic objectives. In many organisations, the decision-making process is a political cat-and-mouse game based on intuition. A total picture of all investments as a portfolio of options is too much to ask for many organisations.
What is project portfolio management?
Project portfolio management is the total management of the project portfolio by risk, strategy and finances. Project management is about the efficiency of the performance of a project: delivering the agreed quality on time and within budget.
Project portfolio management is positioned one step before performance, and is about prioritising projects. Whether and to what extent projects contribute to the achievement of the strategic objectives of the organisation is an important question. Project portfolio management enables you to:
focus all projects on achieving the organisation's strategic objectives, so that the organisation no longer wastes resources (time and money) on the 'wrong' projects.
arrive at a well-balanced project portfolio based on facts and objectives instead of just intuition and personal opinions. It's not for nothing that they say "if it can't be measured, it can't be managed".
Improper management of the project portfolio is often linked to one of the following mistakes: The Berenschot development scan enables you to determine how far organisational behaviour or the process of project portfolio management are developed in your organisation. This gives you a fast and clear insight into the position of your organisation in relation to project portfolio management. Why is project portfolio management important?
Every organisation has an implicit or explicit project portfolio. And assigning the right resources is of essential importance to any organisation. After all, this is what sets the course of the organisation. But strategy is often reduced to words on a board, an inspiring policy memorandum or a slick PowerPoint presentation. But the actual strategy of an organisation is defined by where the money goes. And in many cases, the strategy is used as an excuse to justify the investment. Often, when the benefits of a particular idea cannot be set out in clear terms, there is a tendency to refer to the strategy.
ICT projects often promise the moon: huge cost savings, quality improvements. etc. But more than half of all ICT projects still fail to live up to expectations. Achieving the potential advantages proves to be not that simple. On the one hand, this does have to do with the control and management of ICT projects, but often things go wrong before they even start. Determining the added value of an ICT project (i.e., the contribution the project makes to the organisation's strategic objectives) is a vague and tricky business. The biggest mistakes in project portfolio management
Project portfolio management in your organisation
Attempting to implement portfolio management without insight into the required behavioural changes is unwise, if not impossible. Examples of elements of organisational behaviour are the decision-making style and partnership willingness.
Starting project portfolio management must always begin with the process. Why? Because we have a direct influence on the process, and it is easier to exert control over it. Moreover, the process has a positive effect on organisational behaviour. Examples of process elements are strategy formation, project monitoring and budget apportionment.
