A Visual Exploration Approach to Project Portfolio Management

Defining projects is a very common method to manage operational goals and activities within an organizational unit. It is also effective to form organizational or cross-unit project teams to carry out strategic business activities. In fact, many organizations (and their major departments overseeing organization-wide resources such as information technology) are becoming project-oriented (Artto 2001, Gareis 2000). The major concern in these organizations or departments is the management of their projects in an effective and efficient manner. This requires clear understanding and communication of project status of each project, as well as balancing allocation of resources and their contribution to the overall organizational goals. A Project Management Office (PMO) is usually established to take such responsibility and an approach commonly understood as project portfolio management (PPM) is adopted. In PPM, all projects are managed as a group (a portfolio), which is treated as a basket of investments that can balance risks and returns. Besides following traditional single project management practices, such as defining, estimating, scheduling, tracking, and optimizing the tasks and resources required to plan and complete a project (IDC 2006), it also manages these projects at a higher portfolio level. Examples of common activities in PPM and decisions to be made are (Reddy 2004):