What is this thing called Portfolio Management?

In May's blog we explored the meaning of project success and it was clear that project management is focused on doing the project right, with a wider view of success identifying the need to deliver on more than the key constraints of time, budget and scope.

Over the next few weeks I will explore Portfolio Management which is predominately about choosing the right projects that are aligned to the organization's strategy.

For those who wish to research deeper the sources for this series are:

• The Wiley Guide to Project, Program and Portfolio Management
• Management of Portfolios - Published by Axelos in the UK
• The Standard of Portfolio Management (Third edition) - published by PMI

Project Success - Part 4 - Reasons to be Cheerful

IMPROVING THE LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS

Wrapping up this series on Project Success I want to revisit some of the earlier themes and identify what you as the Project Manager or Project Owner can do to enhance the likelihood your project being judged a success.

We have already identified in previous entries that a key theme of success is to understand what type of project the organization is initiating or selecting.  

Organizations tend to opt for simplistic assessments of project type. They often equate difficulty of their projects based on size

• how big the scope is
• how large a budget will be required
• estimated time / duration for the project
• team, etc... 

They use $ and estimated counts to categorize their projects and it is true that bigger projects have a higher risk of failure. However, while size of project brings its own set of unique challenges, the real issues that drive the difficulty of projects are:

• complexity in the solution, and the stakeholder relationships
• uncertainty of requirements, or in the project environment
• urgency of delivery

These issues bring an order of magnitude increase in the difficulty of a project, well above the challenges of a large big project.

Project Success - "Projects are like Chalk and Cheese"

This is the third part in my thoughts on Project Success:

• In part 1, I posed the question "How do you measure Project Success?"
• In Part 2, I explored Project Success from different perspectives and provided some links to sources that explored factors in project success and to improve the chance of success beyond serendipity.

The key points from the first two parts are:

• Project Success cannot be judged by the triple constraint.
• The triple constraint of time cost and scope only address the project efficiency dimension of success.x
• Different projects have different success measures depending on your point of view as a stakeholder
• Shenhar and Dvir identified five dimensions of success which could be used as a model to identify the success criteria for a project
• Success criteria has to be built into the project from the first step and then reflected in its plan, demonstrating how the project will deliver the outcome

I believe this evidence also points to the need for an organisation to develop its PM reward system to be based on more than just the traditional triple constraint. 

Wish for Serendipity, take advantage of the fluke, and never trust to dumb luck!

Of course we all want Serendipity to visit us on our projects, we welcome help from any source. A Project Manager can increase the chances of our friend Serendipity visiting the project by:

• Being alert, 
• noticing what others do not see, 
• putting together the project jigsaw as the new pieces emerge in the form of issues, ideas etc...

How does this all relate to project success?  

Successful projects do not just happen. A Project Managers career is going to be a short and painful one if they do not understand how to set up their projects to be successful.