Q&A
The Must-Haves
We asked practitioners: Which skill is most important for
portfolio managers, and why?
The ability to create and maintain
the requisite governance structures
and decision-making frameworks.
Without this skill, the wrong people could end
up making the wrong enterprise portfolio investment decisions.”
—Bernie Hill, PhD, PMP, PfMP, enterprise portfolio
strategist, Virginia Community College System,
Richmond, Virginia, USA
The skill most important to portfolio
managers is the ability to select the
right portfolio. This requires a balance
between understanding the organizational
strategic objectives and translating these into a
portfolio that is well planned, capacitated, com-
municated and executed to realize maximum
ROI for the organization. IT is often seen as an
overhead cost for most organizations, so the
ability to select the right value-adding portfolio
will demonstrate the value of IT to the business.
It will also position IT as a strategy enabler and
not a back-office technology function.”
—Leabetswe Bomvana, head of shared portfolio
management services, Liberty Group, Johannesburg,
South Africa
The most important skill is flexibility.
It may take a long time for many
companies, including my own, to
implement the full scope of the PMI standard
for portfolio management. Implementing tools
and processes and educating the workforce
on usage, significance and value is a multiyear
effort. You may need to find workarounds and
accept temporary solutions along the way. It’s
a long-term effort, so be ready to continuously
adjust direction to keep moving forward.”
—Henning Kruse, PMP, PfMP, assistant vice
president, Credit Suisse, Zurich, Switzerland
The ability to effectively manage
the pipeline (or demand) is the most
important skill for portfolio managers.
It ensures you do the right things rather than just
doing things right. As part of demand management, the core skill lies in defining the right
criteria for project evaluation and authorization—
including financials and budgets—to empower
executives to authorize the right projects from
the portfolio mix. Portfolio managers also need
to have strong interpersonal skills to be able to
negotiate and convince multiple stakeholders
when key decisions need to be made.”
—Venkatraman Lakshminarayanan, PMI-ACP, PMI-RMP, PMP, specialist, portfolio management, Sidra
Medical and Research Center, Doha, Qatar
Leadership and the ability to influ-
ence without authority are essen-
tial as a portfolio manager. You’re
often dealing with very senior leaders within
the organization—and perhaps outside of
the organization as well—and must be able
to lead people in the right decision. In most
cases the portfolio manager isn’t making the
decision, but rather facilitating the decision-
making process.
At times, you may feel like a mediator or even
a referee. You have to be armed with the necessary information, anticipate what questions may
come up and be prepared to facilitate decisions
between often competing factions. As the bridge
between strategy and execution, you may have
to make recommendations that are unpopular
but beneficial to the organization. You have to
be completely impartial as the organization’s
investment manager.”
—Brian Grafsgaard, PMP, PgMP, PfMP, director of
professional services, QBS/Datacom Consulting,
Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
“The ability
to effectively
manage the
pipeline (or
demand) is
the most
important skill
for portfolio
managers. It
ensures you
do the right
things rather
than just doing
things right.”
—Venkatraman
Lakshminarayanan, PMI-ACP,
PMI-RMP, PMP
