Portfolio project management (PPM) requires a delicate balancing act. Employees in these departments must know enough about their company’s values and long-term goals while also understanding the total efforts needed to guide individual projects to completion. Adopting PPM best practices is crucial to ensuring that projects align with business objectives and resources are optimized effectively.
Having a PPM department at all is a luxury for many businesses, but misusing this golden opportunity can do your company much more harm than good. Sticking to the basic processes and standards laid out for your PPM team is a good start, but we’re letting you in on some industry-level secrets that can take things to the next level. Keep reading for our five project portfolio management best practices to level up your department.
Defining PPM: The Basics
The ultimate responsibilities of project management offices (PMOs) are to prioritize, select, and monitor projects that further their organization’s mission. Instead of working in the trenches to complete the organization’s or company’s discrete projects, PPM personnel aim to evaluate every existing or potential project in a wider context.
PMOs need to answer the following questions:
- Would this project be good for the company?
- Does this project align with our organization’s mission, values, and long-term goals?
- Do we have enough employees and resources to carry out this project?
- Is this project more important than others?
- Are we agile enough to adapt to foreseeable contingencies?
Those are far from the only questions PPM employees face; they must confront interrelated aspects between an organization’s 30,000-foot view and its underlying projects.
5 Essential PPM Best Practices to Uphold
A good PPM department understands that not everything goes to plan. While you can anticipate many hurdles and speed bumps, you cannot foresee everything. Within that framework, though, you can adopt the following five practices to give your team the best chances of success.
1. Make Your Portfolio a True Portfolio.
Nobody’s portfolio is perfect. Even the most knowledgeable and experienced investment advisors, for example, do not bat a thousand. Green-lighting a project that doesn’t return a high ROI may not feel good, but you may feel better about it if you applied smart evaluative standards and performed your due diligence.
Consistently evaluating each potential project against the right criteria should, over time, yield positive results if you diversify your project portfolio. Don’t forget to evaluate key criteria if things continue to flounder.
2. Remain True to Your Organization’s Objectives.
Portfolio diversification shouldn’t come at the expense of sacrificing your organization’s values and goals. The executive team chose PPM-related objectives for good reasons, and you shouldn’t turn your back on those North stars as long as they light the path for you. Don’t get caught up in the latest trend your competitors are latching on to just because you want to be part of the crowd!
3. Measure Everything You Can.
If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. This applies to project timelines, spent resources, working hours, checkpoints, project success rates, and ROI. Think of failures as data points. Instead of bemoaning what went wrong, visualize it in a graph and devise ways to minimize inefficiencies in the future.
Adopting PPM best practices for data-driven decision-making can significantly improve project success rates. The ability to measure and analyze performance ensures that companies make informed choices and continuously refine their strategies.
4. Trust Your Coworkers.
This advice can benefit almost any employee, but it may be particularly relevant to PPM offices. By definition, PPM professionals are generally duty-bound to watch from the skies and not get their hands dirty with the nuts and bolts.
Interfering with a study can produce skewed results, and skewed results are not effective in informing future endeavors. Let project managers and ground-level workers perform their duties without too much involvement.
5. Manage Expectations with PPM Process Optimization.
We can’t think of a scenario in which it’s better to overpromise and underdeliver. Remember those foreseeable (and unforeseeable) contingencies we mentioned earlier? They will show up when you least expect them.
Managing expectations is even more important if projects affect external stakeholders. For instance, projects involving product launches often require ultra-sensitive timelines. Proactive communication is crucial for keeping everyone happy.
Clear communication is a cornerstone of PPM best practices. Keeping stakeholders informed and setting realistic expectations ensures smoother execution and fewer surprises down the line.
Enhancing Project Success with PPM Best Practices
Implementing strong PPM methodologies goes beyond just choosing the right projects; it also involves refining processes, improving collaboration, and optimizing resources. Organizations that prioritize PPM best practices create a structured approach that leads to better project outcomes and long-term success.
Invest in PPM Software That Sets You Up for Success with Sciforma
Having the right data in front of you, knocking down information silos, and being efficient with your time are all important qualities in PPM software. Having all the features you need on an intuitive, scalable platform is just as important, but few rise to the challenge.
Sciforma is one of those few. We know our clients value efficiency, transparency, and collaboration while ensuring projects actually get done. Plan projects, allocate resources, and monitor progress efficiently with customizable dashboards and intuitive data visualizations.
Centralize all of your PPM efforts into one purpose-built platform with the help of Sciforma. To learn more about how our PPM software can help you streamline your operations and improve organizational efficiency, book a demo with our team today.
