I've been working for several months now for a top 10 city IT department developing the selection criteria for a Project Portfolio Management System. During the research phase I've come across many good sources that have been put to use in the solicitation.
Books
- Advances Project Portfolio Management and the PMO, Gerald I. Kendall and Steve C. Rollins, J. Ross
- Reinventing Project Management, Shenhar and Dvir
- IT Governance, Weill and Ross
- IT Portfolio Management, Maizlish and Handler
All these have been mentioned before, but are worth mentioning again.
Web Sources
- MIT Sloan, Center for Information Systems Research
- Forrester and Gartner PPM materials (which are subscription only)
- OGC's Project, Program, Portfolio Management Maturity Model (P3M3)
In the end PPM is about decision rights around what projects can enter the portfolio. This is called "guarding the front door of IT." Once in the portfolio the project must "earn its keep," by meeting the cost, schedule, and technical performance measures. The key to success in portfolio management is to have an algorithm that identifies projects that aren't "earning their keep," and make suggestions in the form of a Decision Support System, to find out what to do about it.
This doesn't mean how to fix the mis-performing project. But what to do about the project from the view of the portfolio. This means
- Keep the project and correct the "off baseline" elements through project management
- Drop the project
- Put it on hold "pause" until it can start to earn its keep at some later point
These "trades" are what Portfolio Management is about. It's one level above Program Management.
