Project Portfolio Management (PPM), is a discipline for controlling and managing projects as a part of a general portfolio of project investment. The purpose of PPM is to establish a set of values, techniques and technologies to enable visibility, standardization, measurement and process development. The purpose of PPM tools is to enable the organization to handle the continual flow of projects from concept to completion.
PPM addresses the problems surrounding resource allocation, e.g. time, finance, personnel, capacity etc. In order to borrow concepts from the financial world, the project portfolio and the following PPM initiative should be based on financial goals such as growth and added value for share holders etc. To make this worthwhile, it is equally important to assess risk using statistical methods. To optimize resources and projects without these factors in mind causes one to fail to take into account the most important resource in an organization, which becomes very apparent to those within it irrespective of whether it concerns IT, finance, marketing etc., and which is of course money.
Apart from the project investment decision, PPM aims to support continual assessment of the project profile so that each project can be observed with respect to the effect of the relative contribution on the business goals. If a project under performs (exceeds budget or fails to give expected results) or does not correlate with the business goals (governed by circumstantial factors), management can decide to cancel a project and reallocate resources to other projects. If analysis is performed regularly, the project portfolio can be maintained so that it always meets the needs of the operation.
Sigma provides services within the following areas:
• Compile processes and decision matrixes.
• Implement systems and tools.
• Train and provide mentors for the portfolio office, the portfolio manager, control groups and organization leaders.
• Take responsibility for and lead portfolio management.
• Establish portfolio control in the organization and create ownership.