Outline
    What is project portfolio 
     management?
    How do you organize project 
     portfolios?
    What techniques are used to 
     optimize portfolios?
    How can @task help you optimize 
     portfolios?
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 What is Project Portfolio 
 Management?
      Project portfolio management is an emerging 
       business strategy in which organizations 
       group and manage projects and programs as 
       a portfolio of investments that contribute to 
       the entire enterprise’s success
      While project management focuses on doing 
       things right, project portfolio management 
       focuses on doing the right things
      Components of a portfolio can be measured, 
       ranked, and prioritized
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       Project Management Vs. 
       Project Portfolio 
       Management
        Tactical Goals                                                                   Strategic Goals
 Project Management                       Project Portfolio Management
 •                                        •
  Are we carrying out  projects well?      Are we working on the right projects?
 •                                        •
  Are projects on time and on budget?      Are we investing in the right areas?
 •                                        •
  Do project stakeholders know             Do we have the right resources to be 
   what they should be doing?              competitive? 
        *Schwalbe, Information Technology Project Management, 
        Sixth Edition, and An Introduction to Project Management, 
        Third Edition, 2010
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         Best Practice
   Why is it that some companies, like Proctor & 
     Gamble, Johnson and Johnson, Hewlett Packard, 
     and Sony are consistently successful in New 
     Product Development (NPD)? Because they use 
     a disciplined, systematic approach to NPD 
     projects based on best practices
        65.5% of companies performing the best at NPD align 
         projects with business strategy vs. 46% of companies 
         performing the worst at NPD
        65.5% of best performing NPD companies have their 
         resource breakdown aligned to business strategy 
         while only 8% of worst performing companies do.*
     *Robert G. Cooper, “Winning at New Products: Pathways to Profitable 
     Intervention,” PMI Research Conference Proceedings (July 2006).                             5
    What Went Right?
    Jane Walton, the project portfolio manager for IT 
     projects at Schlumberger, saved the company $3 
     million in one year by simply organizing the 
     organization’s 120 IT projects into one portfolio. She 
     found that 80 percent of the organization’s projects 
     overlapped, and fourteen separate projects were 
     trying to accomplish the same thing. The company 
     canceled several projects and merged others to 
     reduce the newly obvious redundancy*
    A 2009 study found that a comprehensive project 
     portfolio management tool “is likely to provide an 
     ROI of more than 250%”**
   *Scott Berinato, “Do the Math,” CIO Magazine (October 1, 2001).
   **Craig Symons, “The ROI of Project Portfolio Management 
   Tools,” Forrester Research (May 8, 2009)
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