Project Portfolio Management: A View From The Management Trenches

Why We Wrote the Book

As the Enterprise Portfolio Management Council members continued to learn more about project portfolio management (PPM) from each other over the years since its inception, we discovered a distinct shortage of practical books written to aid those of us practicing the art of PPM. Most of the volumes available on the topic of PPM spoke from an academic point of view, or from some proprietary source selling processes, methodologies, consulting services, and even software programs. Realizing that we were seeing distinct patterns of workable processes amongst ourselves, and encountering similar issues, we began to ask ourselves how we could best help others in our situation. We concluded that we could not be alone in this PPM journey. We bounced around a number of ideas, but the idea of writing a practical book excited the EPMC membership. We came to the conclusion that we could put our ideas into a format that could reach far more people, likely going through some of the same trials and tribulations as each of us in dealing with PPM. We decided to write a book about what we have learned in a clear and practical style that could communicate to many others some of the sound practices we have found to work, and to help avoid some of the difficulties we have learned about the hard way.

The next step, of course, was to ask for volunteers to actually determine what to specifically write about and then to actually complete a manuscript. In the end, ten of us decided ...