Project Portfolio Management: A Model for Improved Decision Making

Project portfolio management (PfM) is a critically important discipline, which organizations must embrace in order to extract the maximum value from their project investments. Essentially, PfM can be defined as the translation of strategy and organizational objectives into projects, programs, and operations (portfolio components); the allocation of resources to portfolio components according to organizational priorities; alignment of components to one or more organizational objectives and the management and control of these components in order to achieve organizational objectives and benefits.

The interest and contribution to the body of knowledge in project portfolio management has been growing significantly in recent years, however, a particular area of concern is the decision-making, during the management of the portfolio, regarding which portfolio components to accelerate, suspend, or terminate. Failing to determine how the individual and cumulative components of a portfolio contribute to an organization’s strategic objectives leads to poorly informed decisions that negate the positive effect that a sound understanding of project portfolio management could have in an organization.