PM Network - August 2014

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.