Streamlined version of a key course in the Stanford Advanced Project Management curriculum

If your organization relies on project work to achieve its strategic and business objectives, you must be sure that you are investing in the right projects, giving those projects the right resources, and getting them completed at the right time.

Mastering the Project Portfolio—An Executive Perspective presents a methodology for project selection, prioritization, and oversight. You’ll examine how a strategic framework and metrics are vital to success, and you’ll learn to align your projects with your business strategies. You’ll discover a process for deciding how to apply limited resources to project demands far in excess of those resources. Plus several short exercises give you hands-on experience using the concepts and techniques you’ve learned to produce and manage your organization’s project portfolio. In addition, you’ll get a Project Portfolio Management Process Guide that details industry best practices and provides alternative approaches to implementation and oversight.

Developed by IPS and the Stanford Center for Professional Development at Stanford University, Mastering the Project Portfolio—An Executive Perspective is a streamlined, two-day version of a key course in the Stanford Advanced Project Management curriculum. This fast-paced course covers proven, process-based portfolio management tools and techniques. Concepts are presented and reinforced through lectures, demonstrations, and structured exercises.

Benefits to the Organization

As a result of Mastering the Project Portfolio—An Executive Perspective, your organization will benefit from:

• Improved ability to make fact-based portfolio management decisions
• A better understanding of how to align projects and staff with strategic objectives
• Effectively prioritizing projects and managing associated resource capacity and demand challenges
• Enhanced organization-wide consistency with regard to portfolio management objectives, processes, roles, and responsibilities
• A common process and vision that the entire organization can use

Learning Objectives

After attending Mastering the Project Portfolio—An Executive Perspective, you will be able to:

• Continually align new and existing projects with business strategies
• Choose between desirable opportunities when faced with limited resources
• Establish governance over project portfolios
• Reduce the negative impact of politics
• Reconcile resource capacity and demand
• Analyze project information to optimize the portfolio
• Apply practical skills to implementing project portfolio management

Target Audience

This course is designed to benefit business executives seeking to gain a basic understanding of the concepts and techniques covered in more detail by the full version of this course and the Stanford Advanced Project Management curriculum as a whole.

Prerequisites. This course has no prerequisites.

Note: not applicable toward SCPM credential. Mastering the Project Portfolio—An Executive Perspective is a condensed version of a course in the Stanford Advanced Project Management curriculum. As such, it cannot be applied toward the Stanford Certified Project Manager (SCPM) credential.

Course Topics

Portfolio Challenge and Introduction

• Resource management complexities
• Project portfolio management (PPM) models
• Basic terminology and portfolio management concepts
• Surfacing expectations

Linking Strategy to Portfolio Management

• Performance cornerstone elements
• Portfolio management approaches and maturity
• Strategy formulation relevance to portfolio management

Creating the Right Environment for Portfolio Project Management

• Launching a new initiative
• Hierarchies of funding and portfolio positioning
• Relationship between portfolio management processes and key business processes
• Portfolio management team roles and responsibilities
• Portfolio risk areas

Metrics, Strategy, and Portfolio Management

• The value of metrics
• Elements of a metrics system
• Metrics as a strategic tool

Aligning Projects with Business Strategies

• Portfolios versus domains
• Identifying strategies
• Scoring model
• Aligning projects to business strategies

The Right Resources on the Right Projects: Capacity and Demand

• Resource capacity guidelines
• Organization breakdown structure and resource pool
• Assessing resource demand
• Estimation: techniques, psychology, and pitfalls

The Optimized Project Portfolio

• Detailed resource estimates
• Resource utilization analysis
• Adjusting the portfolio with respect to alignment, value, and balance to realize business strategies

Managing Innovation as Part of an Overall Portfolio Strategy

• Harvard Business Review case study
• Aggregate project matrix: breakthroughs, platforms, and derivatives
• Multitasking

Summary

• Review of major concepts
• Relevance to strategic planning and execution