Formal Project and Portfolio Management Processes: The Key to Project Success

IT projects are notorious for coming in over budget, missing deadlines, and failing to meet customers' expectations. A formal project and portfolio management structure can improve the chances of completing a project successfully. Project managers often view formal project management processes as wasted overhead, “paper pushing,” and lost productivity. Implementing a successful project and portfolio management process requires buy-in from your project managers. IT managers need to see the benefit of following a formal project management framework that shows a return on their investment in time.

Having a formal portfolio management process helps executives determine which projects most closely align with the organization's strategic goals, allows the organization to stage projects to avoid resource bottlenecks, and improves the vetting of proposed project requests that can be formally approved.

Benefits of a formal project management process include better communication among project stakeholders, improved information sharing across all levels of the organization through status reporting, and enhanced decision making (project managers can better react and adjust to changes that impact their projects).

A well-defined work flow guiding a project through the project management life cycle enables project managers to focus on the project and have confidence that executives and stakeholders are aware of the project's status. The best way to convince staff to use a new system and methodology is to demonstrate its value and show concrete examples of successful utilization. This panel discussion will engage participants in sharing ways to develop and implement formal project management processes.