Reference no: EM13561533

Q W1-ileana nitu Portfolio project management is often seen as an ad-hoc exercise, and in organizations where project management as an activity, is not clearly defined, managing portfolios becomes an even more randomized exercise, highly dependent on the know-how and competency of the staff assigned to manage that portfolio. Specifically matrix organizations pose a bigger challenge to the way projects ,and further on portfolios, are managed, how resources are employed or become available. The organization i currently work for is one of such types: matrix organization. The organization goes both geographically, the lowest level identified being called GeoMarket ( which may be formed of several countries), as well as by segments of activity, defining various product lines....about 19 to be specific. As such, when only business line is project management oriented, it makes it quite difficult to break the pattern of budgeting by business units, and not by projects. Additionally, when the only one business line organized by projects, in fact links all the other business lines together, the exercise of grouping the projects into portfolios should gain more weight. The purpose of having such a business line, was in fact intended to provide an integrated services offer to the end customers, by bringing together the expertise from all the other business lines. Clearly the strategy of the company should be reflected primarily in this business line, called Integrated Services, as it should be the driving force in the selection of projects. The reality is that each business line, in fact puts together a budget of their own, going by their own priorities, budget that is then discussed in an 1 week meeting by the upper management, and agreed of whether bumped up or down. Even the exercise of adjusting the numbers, comes from the market knowledge, or studies produced by outside consultants. Therefore, the number one frustration everyone faces in the organization, particularly during budgeting cycle, is that their initial projections of the activity and resources needed, gets completely twisted by the senior management, without a possibility to sustain or fight back any changes. Similarly as it was presented in the article " In praise of Middle Managers" from HBR, the middle management in charge of submitting these initial projections of activity trend, feel as playing the role of a complaint child, who is only suppose to align, and not argue, with the upper management decisions. Secondly, the alignment of the business strategy to the projects selection. Few years back the organization's strategy was merely focus on market share. It was around the economic crisis that hit most industries, and gaining as many customers as possible, was seen a priority for when the market would recover. It made perfect sense to everyone in the organization, except to the manufacturing group, particularly the engineering one. Seeing some of their top technology products priced to the customer with negative margin, was clearly not serving or showing the true value of the new technology....subsequently high-tech projects were presenting red money in the eyes of the top management. An better focus on portfolios, could have identified potentially substitute technology , if such services were indeed of strategic interest. Strategic management of portfolios is supposed to bring out only those specific projects, in the right number of them , that will serve the organization's mission and vision, all together contributing to the business strategy. the difference from strategic portfolio to just multiple projects management, is that the first targets that right mix of quality and quantity of work that will serve the company's cause, whereas the latter purely gets the identified projects completed effectively. Lack of portfolio management will only bring out the worst inefficiencies in the organization, acting on all three edges of the triangle of constraints: time, budget, scope and ultimately the core of the project: quality.. From lack of visibility of resources availability, to delays from one project impacting others part of the portfolio, say due to resources releases later than initially estimated, to simply not managing to achieve the organization's objectives or targets, and producing poor quality products or services. In the organization i work for, the lack of visibility over resources availability is probably the number one "ugly" having to deal with. It seems a bit surreal for a company having over 100,000 employees to find that expertise is not available in the organization...yet again there are money losing business units. Clearly not all units have the right mix of activity levels and resources assigned. Resources utilization in the most effective manner became shortly the strategy of the company, in light of striving to top quality, under the motto: "getting it right the first time". As such, starting with this one problem of visibility over resource availability, how can then the top management produce informed decisions over which new projects can still be housed and which ones let go, and most importantly which are these projects constantly off track which keep locking valuable resources? In this context resources were most often referred to as Human Resources or Capital Expenditure. The two still represent a constant struggle of r all the business lines in the organization, to have the most budget allocated in their line to afford the necessary expenditure. Apart from being purely a senior management egos game, the injection of resources into the right business line, should be centrally geared toward that activity which will best support, or will represent the core contributor to the organization's strategy. Fueling egos will certainly not help the cause of disrupting those projects or activities that are detrimental to organization's profits either. This will certainly be another effect of the poor portfolio management. References: Kerzner, H. (2010) Project management best practices: achieving global excellence. 2nd ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Chapters 1 and 2. Rothman, J. (2009) Manage your project portfolio: increase your capacity and finish more projects. Raleigh, NC: The Pragmatic Bookshelf. Chapter 1. Morris, P. & Pinto, J. (2007) The Wiley guide to project program and portfolio management. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Chapters 1 and 2. Archer, N. & Ghasemzadeh, F. (1999) 'An integrated framework for project portfolio selection', International Journal of Project Management, 17, pp. 207-216. Quy Nguyen, H 2001, 'IN PRAISE OF MIDDLE MANAGERS', Harvard Business Review, 79, 8, pp. 72-79, Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost, viewed 21 February 2012. Elonen, S. & Artto, K. (2003) 'Problems in managing internal development projects in multi-project environments', International Journal of Project Management, 21 (6), pp. 395-402. Lampel, J. (2001) 'The core competencies of effective project execution: the challenge of diversity', International Journal of Project Management, 19 (8), pp. 471-483. Mikkelsen, H., Olsen, W. & Riis, J. (1991) 'Management of internal projects', International Journal of Project Management, 9 (2), pp. 77-81. Platje, A., Seidel, H. & Wadman, S. (1994) 'Project and portfolio planning cycle: project based management for multiproject challenge', International Journal of Project Management, 12 (2), pp. 100-106.