prepared to respond quickly when opportunities
arise, says Blaze Goraj, PMP, portfolio manager,
Central and Eastern Europe, IT outsourcing at HP
Enterprise Services, Poznan, Poland. ;e global IT
infrastructure company is a PMI Global Executive
Council member.
“It’s important to understand what’s happening
in the market and how the client needs are chang-
ing and evolving,” he says. “You have to understand
not only what is happening now but what is going
to happen three years from now—and be able to
respond in a ;exible manner.”
To take advantage of new opportunities or suc-
cessfully manage unexpected crises, organizations
need to have access to two things: good information
and deployable resources, Mr. Goraj says.
“If you create a management system for your
portfolio that brings you key metrics, then you’re
able to act quickly based on the changes. You always
need to have bandwidth to respond to changes, so
managing a bu;er of your capacity is key.”
To maintain this bu;er, portfolio managers need
to resist the temptation to use their available
resources at 100 percent of their capacity.
but it’s still not in the best of health. Yet for organizations willing to take chances, opportunities
abound. For their portfolio managers, that means
;guring out what those opportunities are—and how
to mitigate the risks they present.
While global growth will climb to 3. 7 percent
this year and 3. 9 percent in 2015, according to the
International Monetary Fund, the long-term forecast is cloudy. In fact, a medium-term slowdown
will keep growth ;gures low through 2025, the
Conference Board predicts. Advanced economies
are projecting a steady uptick in the near-term,
but growth remains slow and emerging markets
haven’t been able to pick up the slack. Without
government-backed stimulus spending, developing
markets may see their growth engines stall. Even
China has cooled.
For those organizations that strike a ;ne balance
of ;exibility, preparedness and focus, though, the
economic climate may prove a blessing in disguise.
LIMBER UP
With shrinking margins for error, organizations
need to keep a close eye on market changes and be