Successfully compile and implement project portfolios
It’s a situation that often occurs in companies: many projects, limited resources and a deadline by which sales figures must be achieved or the new product must be released.
In this situation, decision-makers ask themselves two key questions:
- Which projects and tasks should we do to add the most value to the company?
- How do we ensure that the selected projects and tasks are ready by the deadline?
With projectfacts, you simply compile your desired project portfolio and compare it with alternative scenarios. In this way, you can assess in real time which portfolio will provide the greatest benefit and whether the existing team capacities are sufficient. Integrated project management supports you during implementation. With it, you can work agilely, classically or hybrid. In this way, you get the maximum for your business goals.
In companies that work on a project basis, HR employees must first request approval from the project managers before they can approve a vacation request. For this purpose, various approval steps can be added, e.g. by supervisors or project managers. A new option is to use special vacation managers for approval. They can be defined per capacity.
Many projects, limited resources, one goal
Prioritizing projects is often not easy, because strategic goals compete with fast turnover, internal projects with customer orders, small projects with large projects or schedules with available resources.
Faced with this tension, many companies resort to what they think is the simplest solution. Projects are processed in a rigid pipeline and whoever shouts loudest for resources gets them.
This method is pragmatic and helps those involved to manage ongoing business. At the end, however, there is often disillusionment: we have again missed sales targets, the product does not meet expectations, or customers are dissatisfied because deadlines have not been met.
A better solution is one that defines in advance which goals are to be achieved by the next milestone. The milestone can be the quarterly closing, a planned product release, a trade show, or something similar.
Tools from multi-project management
The tools that help companies achieve their goals are called project portfolio management and program management. They are special forms of multi-project management, but differ in their basic understanding.
Both approaches aim at selecting and managing projects from the existing project landscape in such a way that they make the greatest possible contribution to achieving the company’s goals within the given restrictions (limited resources, etc.).
With projectfacts you make use of this basic idea. With the help of virtual milestones, you plan in advance which tasks and projects you want to realize by the deadline. You can see the effects in real time. This allows you to try out different scenarios until you are satisfied with the result.
The following two examples use specific use cases to show how portfolio planning helps companies plan and implement their projects.