Page 41 - Organizational Project Management

Chapter 4—The Organizational Project Management Processes

■ Managing stakeholder expectations at the program level
■ Ensuring that program objectives support portfolio strategies (see below)
■ Prioritizing projects within the program and the allocation of resources
■ Coordinating the activities of multiple project managers and project
teams
■ Managing the scope that encompasses all of the projects within the pro-
gram
■ Managing conflicts among projects to achieve organizational goals
■ Adhering to definitions of responsibility and authority for communica-
tion and action
■ Managing the delivery of expected benefits.
It is also important to note that Program Management involves Initiating
and Closing processes, in the same way that these processes are integral to
beginning or completing any project or phase of a project. This will also be
shown to be true of Portfolio Management.
The process groups associated with Project Management— Initiating
processes, Planning processes, Executing processes, Controlling processes,
and Closing processes—have relevance to Program Management, as well.
The challenge, however, is more complex. For example, Initiating must con-
sider other existing projects and Controlling must include methods of mon-
itoring and making decisions about multiple projects. As with Project
Management, the idea of maturity within the domain of Program Man-
agement is tied to the ability to perform each of the processes well, and
includes the concept of establishing program-level standards, process mea-
sures, process controls, and continuous improvement of processes.
The specific Program Management Best Practices and Capabilities in
OPM3 are intentionally general in nature to cover both the multi-project
management and product-related aspects of Program Management. Assess-
ment and improvement planning associated with Program domain Best
Practices must consider both of these aspects.
Generally speaking, standardizing Program Management processes
depends on standardizing the Project Management processes for the proj-
ects within that program. This same reasoning can be extended to process
measurement, control, and continuous improvement.

4.5 PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT PROCESSES
The third domain making up organizational project management is Port-
folio Management.
A portfolio is a collection of projects and/or programs and other work
grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet
strategic objectives. The projects or programs of the portfolio may not nec-
essarily be interdependent or directly related.
Smaller organizations may be able to limit themselves to a single port-
folio. Larger organizations may need to utilize multiple groups of portfo-
lios, usually created along the lines of major organizational units (e.g.,
divisions, groups, business units, etc.). Similarly, some organizations may
have separate portfolios for strategic and operational projects, because
selection and evaluation criteria will tend to be dramatically different. In
this case, organizations need to group strategic efforts carefully into sets

©2003 Project Management Institute, Four Campus Boulevard, Newtown Square, PA 19073-3299 USA 25