The Differences Between Programme And Portfolio Management Management Essay

The Differences Between Programme And Portfolio Management Management Essay Portfolio and programme management has question of governance from two perspectives. The first perspective is the interconnectedness of the different project objectives in order to increase of combined project outcomes. This requires to the development of programmes, which defined by Project Management Institute (PMI) as a group of related projects, managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually (PMI, 2004) cited in (Blomquist Moller, 2006). The other perspective is concerned with the interrelationships among the management requirements for these multi projects in order to achieve the organizations overall business benefits. This led the need to develop portfolio management techniques which also defined by (PMI) as the centralized management of one or more portfolios, which includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing and controlling projects, programmes and other related work to achieve specific strategic busin ess objectives. (PMI, 2004) cited in (Blomquist Moller, 2006) From this concept it can be understood as a collection of projects or programmes and other work that are grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work in order to meet strategic business benefits. The projects or programmes of the portfolio may not necessary be interdependent or directly related. It is important to establish what is meant by programme management as opposed to portfolio management. The practitioners of the project management had tried to find good alignment between project management and organization strategy. Researches (Yuming, Quan Peng, 2007) in the literature has examined the idea for these strategies that should be aligned and moved from the corporate level through portfolio, programme and multi projects in a systematic manner that provides cohesion, visibility and effective communication as shown in figure 1. Figure 1: Diamond-E Model based alignment between strategy and portfolio project management adopted from (Yuming, Quan Peng, 2007) Programme Management:- In the past, the term programme has many synonyms that have been used, including multi project, portfolio of projects, macro project, and complex change (Ferns, 1991). A 3 phase for implementing programme management is suggested by (Ferns, 1991) as follows; preparatory phase, programme establishment, programme management. Basically, the concept of project management has evolved to what so called programme management and finally portfolio management. Most literatures illustrates programme management to be connected with albeit different from portfolio management (Lycett, Rassau and Danson, 2004; Turner and Muller, 2003) cited in (Blomquist Moller, 2006). However, Programme management is often perceived as the top layer of a hierarchy consisting of multi projects. The main goals of programme management is to focus on improving efficiency and effectiveness by choosing better prioritization, planning and coordination in the management of projects. Also by developing of business focus by identifies the goals of multi projects and the entire programme related to the requirements, goals, drivers and organizations work culture. Some researches on programme management have classified into three categories; programme management as an entity for organizational structure, programme management process and life cycles, and competencies for programme management. Sometimes, projects are too large to manage as a single entity. It is more convenient and effective to have work breakdown structure in a series of closely related and linked projects, each of them managed by a project manager, reporting to a programme manager (Buttrick, 2000a). PROGRAM.jpg Figure 2: A programme where each individual constituent project is used to manage a substantial work adopted from (Buttrick, 2000a) Generally, Programme management is a technique that provides the organization to coordinate multiple related projects concurrently, and cannot be controlled individually by bringing together people, activities and information in order to achieve the end goal and obtain significant benefits from them as a collection (Norton, 2008) and (Deancon, 2010). Programme may involve elements of related work outside the scope of the discrete projects in programme such as ongoing operations. A programme can only succeed if the multi-projects within the programme are completed, therefore without programme management; the projects will be uncoordinated and will not integrate into a final goal. Other authors (Haughey, 2001) has defined programme management as a group of related projects carried out in order to achieve a defined business objective and benefit. It provides specific way to control project management and covers vision, mission, aims and objectives, scope, approach, design, responsibilit ies, resourcing and benefits realization. By using well defined framework. The programme management has four basic stages; programme identification, planning, delivery and closure. These stages take the programme from beginning which must be based on strategies, right through to the final realization of a defined business objectives or benefits. 2.1 Structure of Programme Management:- The structure of Prgramme management allows controlling multi projects so they deliver effectively for the group as well as to hand the changes proactively and also it provides a framework for handling complexity and risk. Moreover, there is often a program support group to undertake the necessary coordination, administration and implement common standards (Buttrick, 2000a). It concentrates on delivering new capabilities and services, Business plan, Strategic objectives, Change and some other initiatives. For example the long term objectives can be definite by programme management, and this will help the organization to identify the multi projects that will lead in achieving these objectives and needs to think carefully about the benefits of these projects are designed to bring about. These potential benefits are considered as; meeting business needs, saving, and reducing risk. The main activities for programme management are: setting the baseline, agreeing roles and responsibilities , Programme planning, project priority, stakeholder communication, progress reporting, quality management, risk management, issue management, managing benefits and programme closure (Haughey, 2001). Some authors says that(Haughey, 2001), all programmes should have a well defined baseline from which to measure costs and benefits resulting from investment into the programme. Hence, Programme management is becoming an increasing important issue for managing changes within business which can be internal, such as increasing the level of products, or external, such as implementing a new government policy (Norton, 2008). Project team.jpg Figure 3 A typical programme management structure adopted from (Buttrick, 2000a) Project portfolio:- With a strongly increase share of companies investing in project- organized undertakings, the generally expected advantage in controllability for multi project comes along with a loss of transparency and hence effectiveness of the overall project landscape (Elonen and Artto, 2003) cited in (Jonas, 2010). So the need for a structure and proactive management of the project landscape gets increasingly important. Effective project portfolio management is becoming a key competence for organizations handling numerous projects simultaneously. A project portfolio is seen as number of projects that compete for scarce resources and are conducted under the sponsorship or management of a specific organization (Buttrick, 2000b). Refer to (Jonas, 2010) study, the measure for portfolio success should be taken at different points in time. The overall system success is consisting of three dimensions; process effectiveness, portfolio success and portfolio related corporate success. The tasks for portf olio management is consist of those related to multi project is; portfolio structuring, resource management, portfolio steering, and organizational learning and portfolio exploitation It can be argue that the portfolio management system success will be positively influenced by the extant to which these multi project portfolio tasks are executed in the company. As mentioned realer, Portfolio management is all the projects which are related or unrelated, undertaken by an organization. These can be divided into functional area such as IT, supply chain, HR, new development. With this level, it gives a complete view across the organization to understand all the multiple projects are taking place, related or unrelated. The best way for presenting this data is by business function, thereby giving a view of the projects in a specific area. Portfolio management is useful for decision makers because it provides them a total view of all initiatives taking place across the organization. This will ensure that the organization focused on what is important, helps avoiding duplication and informs strategic decision making. The activities which will be undertaken during portfolio management are: Checking strategic alignment, risk management, progress reporting. When the organization handling group of projects which are carried out by sponsorship and managed by this organization. These projects must complete for scare resources such as people, finances, time, and so on which can be available from the sponsors, since there are normally not enough resources to hand out for proposed multi projects which meets the organizations minimum requirements on certain criteria. Therefore project portfolio is the selection for periodic activity involved in selection a portfolio, from available project proposals and the multi project currently underway which must meet the organizations stated objectives in a desirable manner without exceeding available resources or effecting other constraints (Archer Ghasemzadeh, 1999) . So the portfolio management has to be pivotal in planning and controlling complex project more effectively and more efficiently and this can be achieved by implementing project portfolio management practices as a management innovation. Programme and Portfolio Management:- With the understanding the difference between programme and portfolio management, it is possible to understand what the organization needs to achieve and how programme and portfolio management fits into an organization processes and procedures. The hierarchy in this understand is shown in figure 1. Figure 1 Programme management Hierarchy adopted from (Haughey, 2001) By considering that, some multi projects are too large to manage as a single entity, so it is necessary to split them up into smaller manageable projects. And also if the whole project is too large for single project manager to handle, then, the numbers of projects managers are needed to handle the small projects. Hence smaller project with multiple project managers all designed to achieve a single long term objective for the organization. For control these groups and have an overall view a programme manager is required. 5 Conclusions:- The synopsis differences between a programme and portfolio in multi projects are; Programme is a group of projects related to the organization that are managed in a coordinated way to gain business goals that would not be possible were these projects managed independently (Ferns, 1991). Programme management concentrates on delivering; new capabilities, Business plan, Strategic objectives, Change and other initiatives. Portfolio management is all projects, related or unrelated, being carried out by this organization. Portfolio management aims to optimize the results of project portfolio to gain organization benefits and wants. Portfolio project a collection of projects, programmes and other work that are compiled together to facilitate the effective management of the same work to meet strategic business benefits. Each one has a special role to play and needs to be managed differently (Deancon, 2010). programme and portfolio management has been designed to fulfill nearly all organizations individual and multi projects to succeed in todays competitive climate.