Effective Project Management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme

Chapter 14. Establishing and Managing a Project Portfolio Management Process

He who attempts too much seldom succeeds.

—Dutch proverb

A good way to outline a strategy is to ask yourself: "How and where am I going to commit my resources?" Your answer constitutes your strategy.

—R. Henry Miglione, Oral Roberts University, An MBO Approach to Long-Range Planning

CHAPTER LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you will be able to:

• Understand current practices in corporate project portfolio management and how they are applied

• Know how to deliver explicit business value through a strategically aligned project portfolio

• Adapt the concepts and practices of project portfolio management to agile project portfolio management

Organizations that invest in information technology (IT) projects—whether hardware-focused, software-focused, or both—must have a plan for that investment. The dollars needed to fund these projects almost always exceed the dollars available, so the organization is faced with a decision as to which projects should be funded, funded partially, or not funded at all. Is this a short-term decision that looks only at the coming budget cycle, or is there some long-term strategy that spans multiple budget cycles? How can the funding agency determine whether an IT investment is a good investment? Can some criteria be applied? The answers to these questions are simple in some cases and extremely difficult in others. This chapter uses a process life cycle approach that traces the life ...