Agile Project Portfolios
A project portfolio is traditionally a collection of projects that an organization selects to create a roadmap of work to accomplish. Most companies have requests from various business units that create a situation where there are more potential projects than funding available. Portfolio management involves the selection of projects that are well aligned with organizational goals and are mapped anywhere from 12 months to 3 years later.
Portfolio management provides a means by which to ensure executive visibility, provides guidelines for staffing needs and serves as a vehicle by which to communicate progress on projects. Like projects are grouped into programs and most efforts are delivered using some type of stage gate process used to validate each portion of the linear delivery of traditional projects.
One of the challenges with using a traditional project portfolio approach is in the fact that issues are generally identified later in the life of a project and with a set number of resources, projects cannot always adapt to changes that are identified that could derail the eventual success. This can lead to frustration from all members of the project team as well as stakeholders when the delivery does not meet the changing needs of the organization and the portfolio must be radically modified.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: