Are you confused about project portfolio management? Well, in this video, you're
going to learn all about it. And if you need help building the right skill set so that you can be
successful in project management, well I have a really cool free webinar for you, and I have
the link for you under this video. Hi, if you're new here, welcome, my name is Adriana. Girdler.
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In this video, I'm going to tell you exactly what is project portfolio
management, the benefits of it, and the four steps you need in order to do it well.
So if you're as excited as I am about this video, please give it a like, comment because it does
help us grow our community and give you more great content. So on that note, let's get to it.
What is project portfolio management? Project portfolio management actually is taking a
whole bunch of different projects and programs that potentially don't necessarily relate to
each other and you put them all together under a portfolio. The whole goal behind it is to ensure
that it's a link to company strategy or specific strategy that that portfolio is trying to achieve,
and that all these different projects and programs somehow are going to do that same sort of
achievement through the strategy of them executing on it. Now, this is my own personal opinion.
Portfolio management is intense, so I highly recommend that you do some project management
work first, get really comfortable with it. It's like a president of the organization.
You don't just become president. You kind of rise up the ranks. It's the
same thing with portfolio project management. Benefits of project portfolio management. Well,
like I said to my first comment and tip, it definitely is about aligning with organization
strategies. That's the whole point. You want to ensure that what you're doing is making sense,
but a whole bunch of other things to occur with the benefits of portfolio project management.
That is ensuring that you have the right resources, you're not spreading them too thin. You
have really good understanding of budgets. And are you using your budget correctly on projects? Also
priorities. Do you have all the right projects in place and what is the priority sequence of them?
On their own, they may be important, but when you put them under portfolio, tell me, is what you
thought number one, truly number one, with the overall strategy that you're trying to achieve.
It really is a great way to give an overarching view of the needs of the organization and aligning
them to what you're doing and just making sure holistically, you got all your ducks lined up
in a row. So now let's jump into the four steps of the process of project portfolio management.
Step one. Selection and strategy. So this is where you want to get together with your
senior executives and you have to understand what exactly are the organization's objectives. Are you
trying to meet a few objectives? Is it one single objective that is going against a strategy that
you're trying to achieve from an organization? This is really important. Your portfolio is like
an umbrella, bringing together a whole bunch of different projects to ensure that they're all
going to combine and ultimately achieve the goal and strategy. So you really have to do this with
senior management. And once you do that, take a look at what's up there and select the right ones.
You may have multiple portfolios for projects and that's okay because each one may be addressing
a different strategy. The whole goal here is you want to get everyone together and select the right
one that's going to ensure that all of those different projects together
are going to achieve a company objective. Step two. Analyze and organize. So this is
where once you've picked all the projects and or programs are you going to put under
that portfolio, you now have to prioritize them. And then this is how you do it. You take a look
at each one individually, you analyze each one, then you organize them into categories. Based on
that organization of categories that you've taken all your programs and projects, you're now going
to prioritize them, saying that this category with these lumps of projects are number one,
number two, et cetera. So now you have a very clear idea of priority levels against the company
strategy that this portfolio is trying to achieve. Step three. Kickoff and management. All right,
portfolio management is just a real big project that has tons of stuff underneath
it. And you're not the one who's running all of them. You have other project managers who
are. So this is where you want to have a kickoff. You want to bring all the project
managers together who are overseeing projects or the programs that you've put in the categories,
and you want to kick it off. You want to let them know what the expectations are, you want to have
them understand what they're trying to achieve overall, let them know how this is all going to
work. So you're going to take your principles of project management and apply them here.
And when you do that kickoff, you want to now talk in a really bigger scope idea. You want
to talk about resource management, you want to talk about change management, budget management,
and risk management. I have a really cool video for you, and there should be a link under this
video that you can go to afterwards and check it out because this is in portfolio management,
really important that you do this high level thinking critique with your other project
managers who are now reporting into the portfolio, in essence, you who's a portfolio project manager.
Step four. Review and adapt. There's a life cycle to everything. And guess what? Project
portfolio management has a life cycle as well. So as you're progressing and things
are completing, you want to review and adapt your portfolio. You either may want to take on
more newer projects that are going to add to the portfolio, or if you complete everything you may
want to close that portfolio down and start a brand new one. The whole goal here is you
are focused on the objectives and strategies of the organization, and you're ensuring that
everything in that portfolio is achieving it. So if you've done that, yah, congratulations,
and it's just important that you understand that you either end everything once you're done,
or you add new elements to it, but definitely review and adapt. And that's the four steps.
And don't forget to sign up for my free training on some amazing project management principles.
Five secrets on projects that you do not want to miss. The link is below this video.
On that note, thank you so much for watching. Please like, comment. It helps us grow
as a channel and I really appreciate it. So thank you so much, until the next video, see you later.