Field notes on running project portfolios. Written for PMO leads, portfolio managers, and the program teams who turn a list of projects into delivered outcomes.
The real advantages and disadvantages of project portfolio management, and the conditions each one depends on: what PPM gives leadership, where it goes wrong, the cost and overhead it carries, and how to tell whether it is worth it for your organization.
Five worked project business case examples with the sections filled in: replacing a legacy system, hiring a project manager, automating accounts payable, meeting a regulatory deadline, and funding a shared enabler. Each shows the problem, the options, an illustrative cost-benefit table, and the recommendation a board would actually vote on.
Application portfolio management and project portfolio management share the word portfolio and almost nothing else. One manages the software you already run, the other decides which projects get funded. This covers the three tool categories that all call themselves APM and what each costs you if you pick wrong, which analyst research actually exists for the category, a routing table from symptom to tool, and what an application review has to produce before anyone will fund it.
What a benefits realization plan contains, who owns each benefit, how to set a baseline and a target you can actually measure, when to measure (almost always after the project has closed), and a downloadable benefits tracker with a worked example.
A downloadable project portfolio management template for Excel and Google Sheets: the columns a portfolio tracker needs, the formulas behind the dashboard tab, a worked example, and an honest answer on when a spreadsheet stops being the right tool.
What agile portfolio management is, how it differs from traditional PPM and from lean portfolio management, the operating model (funding, cadence, intake, metrics), the tools that support it, and what an agile portfolio manager actually does.
What resource forecasting is, how it differs from capacity planning, four forecasting techniques with the arithmetic, a downloadable Excel and Google Sheets forecast template, and how to read a persistent gap.
A business case template with every section spelled out, a downloadable Excel financial model that calculates NPV, ROI, IRR and payback, a worked example, and the sensitivity test that survives a skeptical CFO.
What strategic alignment means, why portfolios drift out of it, the Henderson and Venkatraman alignment model, how to score projects against strategic objectives, and how to measure alignment with a worked example.
What resource contention is, why it happens, how to detect it before it bites, and the escalation order for resolving competing claims on the same person across a portfolio.
Earned value management (EVM) measures project performance by comparing planned value, earned value, and actual cost. This guide gives you the full formula set (CV, SV, CPI, SPI, EAC, ETC, VAC, TCPI), a worked example with real arithmetic, how to read a CPI and an SPI, how a PMO rolls earned value up to portfolio level, and the honest limits of the technique.
RAG status rates a project red, amber, or green to show its health at a glance. This guide covers what RAG stands for, what each color actually means, how to write objective criteria so the rating is not a negotiation, worked examples, who owns the rating, and how to stop green projects from failing overnight.
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