1a
Project Portfolio Management | Business Priorities Guide
Measure
corporate
performance
Maximize
productivity of
individuals
working on
projects
Optimize resource allocation
across the organization
Manage the costs of
projects and programs
Align
investments with
business strategy
BUSINESS DRIVER
ACCOUNTABLE ROLES
NEEDS
CHALLENGES
IMPACTS
Key Executives, Portfolio
Managers, Project
Management Office
Director, Strategic Planning
Director
Define, prioritize, and communicate the actual
business strategy
The organization does not understand the
business strategy
It is difficult to measure or track effectiveness
against the business strategy
The organization is not getting maximum value
of return
Some high-value business projects do not
receive the proper funding
Project managers are not held accountable for
budget factors
Projects are selected based on financial value
instead of business value
Funding is either lacking or misappropriated
The visibility of burn rates is diminished
Business units do not have visibility into what
other work is being performed
Constrained or diminished budgets prevent
organizations from investing in the right projects
The organization's capabilities are not
understood
Finding the correct people for various jobs is
difficult
Professional development is ineffective
Organization improperly uses resources
Assessing capabilities for future work is difficult
 Misdirected effort that is vast and expensive
 Allocation of resources without proper
business justification
 Poor stock performance
 Poor corporate performance that is constantly
changing and unbalanced
 Critical initiatives are not funded and cannot
contribute to corporate objectives
 Diminished return of business value due to
cost overruns
Chief Financial Officer,
Portfolio Managers,
Director of Finance,
Comptroller
Chief Financial Officer,
Chief Marketing Officer,
Chief Operations
Officer/Chief Operating
Officer, Vice President of
Sales, Chief Information
Officer
Consistently evaluate, rank, and rate competing
investment requests
Ensure investments are properly aligned with
business strategy
Predict financial performance
Gain visibility into work efforts across business
units
Optimize initiatives to increase productivity with
fewer resources
Build a skills inventory
Effectively allocate resources
Track resource performance
Chief Operations
Officer/Chief Operating
Officer, Business unit
leaders
Chief Financial Officer,
Chief Operations
Officer/Chief Operating
Officer, Comptroller
Share and find project artifacts
Tracking the actual work accomplished and
predicting the effort remaining are difficult
Assessing the cost and schedule factors is
difficult
Work effort and assets are mismanaged
Organizational focus is on administrative and
trivial items instead of the work product
 Work is duplicated across business units
 Unbalanced or sub-optimal portfolios of
projects
 Incorrect headcount
 Overpriced or idle resources
 Limited progression of professional
opportunities






Attrition
Cost overruns
Stressed-out employees
Lower productivity
Must validate vendor or outsourced effort
Holding vendors accountable is difficult




Less productivity
Unhappy workers
Loss of alignment to project or business goals
Teams don't work toward the same goals
Ensure project leaders communicate clear
objectives about work performance
Resources are unaware of work assignments or
deadlines
 Project deadlines slip
 Performance diminishes
Use key performance indicators (KPIs) for
corrective actions
Use early indicators of project performance to
support decision making
The organization does not realize when
performance metrics are off track
Poor project performance exists
Provide better visibility into and control of risk
factors and issues
The visibility into risks and issues is limited
No proactive measures of risks exist
No early warnings of project issues exist
 Missed corporate objectives or regulatory
restrictions
 Delayed or missed targets and goals
 Cost overruns
 Missed market opportunities
 Cost and schedule overruns
 Lack time to make proactive corrections
PHASE 1
PHASE 2
PHASE 3
 Communicate business strategy effectively by using
diagrams, charts, and written descriptions, and then
collect, update, and manage initiative requests and
related information
 Collect and objectively prioritize business drivers, and
then drive consensus among executives
 Provide organizational control and action according to
business strategy
 Collect project investment requests and establish a
system to rank and assess them
 Identify and select project investment requests by
scoring that is aligned with business drivers
 Enable a rationalized approach to choose which
investments have the highest return and alignment to
business strategy
 Prove investment worth by defending investment
positioning
 Select investments based on rational decisions rather
than emotions
 Enhance the business value of the portfolio, to ensure
that the mix of investments aligns to established
business strategy
 Measure financial performance per project
 Track financial performance consistently across all
projects and initiatives
 Ensure that project financial data automatically flows
into and from financial systems
 Maintain a list of projects that is distributed to
executives across the organization
 Eliminate duplicate work effort by making work
performed and the results more visible
 Reduce effort on low-value projects and programs
 Track organization-wide budget performance
 Select investments based on prioritized business value
and budget
 Plan demand-management scenarios and make
informed decisions about outsourcing
 Assess capacity vs. demand on a skill level
 Find the right people based on matching their skills,
identify optimal project start dates, and assess when to
delay projects
 Assign resources as they're needed without formal
processes
 Select the right resource based on skill set and
availability, make resource assignments centrally visible,
and communicate effectively with resources
 Understand organizational capabilities across work
management scenarios, make headcount and
outsourcing decisions, and normalize capabilities
decisions from multiple sources
 Make smart scheduling decisions about the planning
horizon based on forecasted projects and programs
 Track resource performance per project manually
 Automate resource tracking
 Plan demand-management scenarios and make
informed decisions about outsourcing
 Increase worker productivity and the consistency of
deliverables
 Collectively create, find, and store project artifacts in real
time
 Improve cross-team collaboration
 Enable project teams to understand a basic schedule
and deadlines for work assignments
 Ensure that project schedules and deadlines are
enforced
 Provide a single interface to enter time information, and
automatically post employee work data in billing
systems
 Report corporate effectiveness or failure
 Make KPIs and underlying performance data available
organization-wide
 Automate action on trends, alerts, and performance
 Get early performance information regarding projects
 Make better decisions by standardizing work effort
reporting
 Transmit work effort to LOB and financial systems, pull
metrics from financial systems, and combine the results
in a comprehensive corporate reporting portal
 Identify and collect information about project risks and
issues
 Identify and fix problems at a project level by using risk
mitigation
 Build tools to support a comprehensive risk
management program
Version 6.0 | October 2012
Measure corporate
performance
Maximize
productivity of
individuals
working on
projects
Optimize resource
allocation across the
organization
Manage the costs
of projects and
programs
Align investments with
business strategy
BUSINESS DRIVER
This document is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
1b
Project Portfolio Management | Business Priorities Guide