Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. “They have to be carefully
monitored to guide the entire portfolio toward the
most beneficial outcome for an organization.”
Ideally, companies want to set key business
objectives for each portfolio, such as revenue
generation, global expansion or product innova-
tion, Mr. Skaf says. This is especially important in
companies that base their future success on the
ability to bring game-changing products or ser-
vices to market. Innovation is a constantly moving
target, so companies need to be sure their innova-
tion investments align and shift with what’s going
on in the marketplace and in their own business
roadmap, he says.
Yet based on the assumption they need space
and freedom to bring the best ideas to the surface,
“many companies allow their most innovative projects to develop in the shadows,” Mr. Skaf adds.
“If invisible innovation efforts”—meaning those
outside of the formal project portfolio—“aren’t
“If invisible
innovation
efforts aren’t
brought out of
the shadows,
they can quickly
turn into ‘zombie
projects’ that
move slowly and
aren’t headed
anywhere.”
—Raed Skaf, PMP, KPMG, Riyadh,
Saudi Arabia
brought out of the shadows, they can quickly turn
into ‘zombie projects’ that move slowly and aren’t
headed anywhere.”
Even the most bleeding-edge ideas need to
be aligned with business objectives and weighed
against the rest of the projects in the portfolio to
determine whether those investments will pay off.
Investments in portfolio management do tend
to pay off. PMI’s 2015 Pulse of the Profession®:
Capturing the Value of Project Management
report shows that organizations with high port-
folio management maturity have a significantly
higher rate of successful projects than those with-
out this level of maturity. It also found that as the
business environment becomes more dynamic
and complex, the need for excellence in project,
program and portfolio management will become
more important to achieving long-term strategic
goals. Despite the benefits of portfolio manage-
ment, though, only 21 percent of Pulse respon-
dents said their organization always practices
portfolio management. Just 16 percent rate their
portfolio management maturity level as “high.”
A comprehensive and agile portfolio manage-
ment process is especially important on projects
with long development cycles, Ms. LaBeau says.
“Changes in the market can put you behind the
curve of where you want to be.”
For example, in her previous role as lead portfo-
lio manager at Vantiv, a payment processing solu-
tions company, the sales team wanted to develop a
new version of one of the company’s products. The
update would meet the clients’ short-term interest,
but the system was scheduled to be discontinued
in three years. The project seemed like a good idea
to them, but when it was reviewed in light of the
broader portfolio, it didn’t make good business
sense, she says. The takeaway was clear:
“Without a good portfolio management process,
companies can be short-sighted and neglect to
analyze the broader impact a project has on the
organization and its resources.”
