There are dozens of projects that are being accomplished in every company throughout the world. Whether it’s something as simple as buying groceries or something much more complicated like IT or finances, managing ongoing projects can be an issue for many.

That is why we’ve prepared a guide on creating and using Project Portfolio Management with some great templates, free of charge, and a suggestion for a project portfolio management software.

As a project portfolio manager, you have probably encountered multiple projects in your lifetime, so you know how tedious of a job it is to manage them. You need to open each of those, check when there’s a due date, what it will bring to the company, and what you should invest your time and money in – it’s a nightmare!

We hope that with this simple toolbox, you can conquer those issues quickly!

So, without further ado, let’s get into some project management processes to create the one, the only – perfect management spreadsheet!

But, before we dive into the detail of project management that any self-respecting project manager needs to know, let’s go over the software we will use when creating such a management system. When considering all the strategic objectives we need to implement in our business strategy, we just have to go with Microsoft Office 2021 Professional Plus Key Retail Global.

There is no better project management software for this on the market! Microsoft Office allows you to create an outstanding project portfolio management and gives you tools to customize it however you want and need.

It has been used worldwide by hundreds of people who utilize it for their regular job. Of course, it’s not the only reason you should use it, but it’s a pretty good predictor of why it is a valuable tool. Some people may be wrong, but millions of them, with the best-run companies on the market, suggesting it to their employees – well, the margin of error seems pretty slim.

Additionally, it is not a costly addition that you just need to pay for in gold, like it was before. Nowadays, you can find Microsoft Office for an affordable price in many different versions. Just check out our offer at RoyalCDKeys.

And now, let’s get on with the templates!

The first on our list is a standard project portfolio summary. You can easily access all the data and information needed to draft the perfect project portfolio template management.

There are all the necessary elements of every project portfolio management that you may need, like budgeting, project health, and many other customizable options. Of course, it is not the most advanced template on the market, but you can do a lot with it, and your program management will benefit.

You can download this template for free at SmartSheet.com.

The project portfolio management template is next up on our list, which is solely focused on efficiency. You just can't go wrong with this one when it comes to cost-benefit analysis, risk management, and all the other money-focused elements.

Key Performance Indicators are of essence in this, and that is why it’s called the project portfolio scorecard, as you will probably need to choose the right resource allocation based on the value of what the project team members put up. If efficiency is not governing, it is something that you’re looking for – this PPM software is a slam dunk. You can download this template for free at SmartSheet.com.

Finally, we have our beloved roadmap. It may not seem like the most advanced way of keeping the centralized management happy, but when it comes to capacity planning – there is no better option, in our opinion.

Roadmap is a great program manager if it can show the company’s strategic objectives in the long run while also seeing every project progress. It’s a great template to ensure your projects are fulfilled and your financial resources optimized. And, if it’s the efficiency you are looking for, those project proposals will meet your standards. You can download this template for free at SmartSheet.com.

There are multiple ways to organize your projects. One of those ways is to create a portfolio, where you can access all the different methods and possibilities that various projects provide you with. It’s an exciting tool if you want to manage your projects efficiently, even if they are from entirely different backgrounds.

With this level of oversight, you will be able to:

• oversee other projects,

• govern them and assign funding, and personnel,

• add a level of urgency to each project,

• be able to control and monitor everything that is going on in the company.

Whether it’s financial management or keeping track of resources, project portfolio management is a tool that will let you see all the existing projects and plan ahead of time.

Manage Multiple Projects

In cases of standard project management, you can speak only of one project at a time, and – you will probably have a much more detailed way of looking at it. Project portfolio management focuses on something completely different. In this case, you need to look at it from a further perspective of a manager, who needs to take care of not only one project at a time but dozens of them.

Another aspect of project portfolio management is that there is no set goal or specific task that it needs to accomplish. The most important element is to keep everything under control and optimize wherever possible.

This simple task management tool can make project execution so much more affordable than it would be in the case of a typical project where the manager is personally responsible and involved in it. We will discuss the difference between project portfolio management and project management in more detail in a further section of this article.

Project portfolio management (PPM for short) can also be created in many different ways, depending on your project. Some of those can be considered more or less advanced. Still, it’s of utmost importance that the manager or the project management office (PPO) can use those project portfolio management tools efficiently to allocate resources in the best way possible.

As we’ve stated before, there is a difference between project portfolio management and project management, and it’s mainly about the scope of things. Project management is, well, managing a project. It consists of strategic planning, establishing the budget, overseeing individual work on the project, and pushing the whole thing further.

On the other hand, project portfolio management does not cover all those elements, but it is mainly concerned with the overall benefit to the organization. So, in this circumstance, it would mean everything the project portfolio manager or the project management office does to optimize the company's efficiency as a whole.

It would include budgeting the projects, for example, and deciding if the project is even necessary for the company to go forward. These actions are not concerned with the individual work or how a project does. However, it is also an essential factor, but rather – what are some interconnections between the projects, how the company should improve in this or that aspect, and if specific actions should be taken to fulfill its primary goal.

Sometimes, investments are not optimal and need to be cut short. Sometimes, the project portfolios can show you a completely different picture than what the manager sees, as they are involved in a particular project themselves. Even though some things may seem significant for the company and bring profit, it may take from some other aspect of the organization's activity that suffers because of this project’s activities. It’s like in the movie “Moneyball”; you may not need the best strikers, but you need “some” strikes to win.

Resource management can be controversial, but those are some of the decisions that the people at the top need to make the company benefit. Sometimes it may mean that well-intentioned projects get shut off; sometimes, people are getting additional resources. The point is to present everything in a grander scheme rather than looking at it as a black-and-white issue. Project portfolio management shows the stakeholders all shades of grey that go into running a successful company.

So, why is it important? Well, there are a couple of reasons we can provide you with. As we’ve spoken about many times before, the most essential is optimization. The biggest threat to your company's success is not optimizing your assets and having projects that are eating up your resources unnecessarily.

So, to combat this problem, it is of essence to create a position or an office that can, independently of all the inside workers, look at the whole organization from a perspective and recommend some solutions that can benefit individual projects and how they work with each other.

Of course, it’s not like a tool with no vices. Sometimes looking at the big picture can make the small one feel like it’s less important or just straight-up miss the idea as a whole. Sometimes it may be the optimal solution to keep some projects going, even though they are not bringing enough advantages to the company, simply because they are worth keeping.

Those can be some public/company utility elements. For example, it may not be super optimal to create spaces suited for people with disabilities because it’s not like it will bring the company monetary benefits or will advance the idea of creating pencils or something, but it is the right thing to do. Plain and simple.

So, now that we know the importance of project portfolio management, let's go over some of the industries in which it is mainly used. According to different studies, almost 75% of companies have a project portfolio management system. It may not be something similar to the templates we’ve presented to you, but some kind of coordination system can and is often in order.

Of course, not every business needs this kind of tool. If you have a grocery store, it seems unnecessary to coordinate the arrival of every single vegetable that comes around your shop. Still, some industries have this kind of utility that seems more than necessary. Here are the most common ones where this kind of management system is implemented.

IT

The biggest beneficiary of well-constructed project portfolio management is definitely the IT industry. With hundreds of ongoing projects and thousands of employees – there is no reason not to create a good PPM to combine all those different strings under one oversight.

And that’s talking about big companies, while dozens upon dozens of smaller ones just need to have a well-drafted resource planning to stay afloat. Employees from IT departments often have a very narrow and specialized scope of expertise, so utilizing their talent in the most efficient way possible can change the outcome of the company as a whole.

Construction

Next thing on our list is the construction industry. Here, a well-drafted project portfolio management can literally save the company millions of dollars. Investments in this industry can take years to fulfill, and everything costs an absurd amount of money. So, in order to combat those elements the right way, you need a plan on how to connect all the different elements that go into, for example, building a skyscraper.

If something goes wrong and is not coordinated with other elements of the project, the project can have months of delay and hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars in fines. The more expensive the project is, the more critical it is to create a mechanism by which you can coordinate all the different aspects of construction.

Finances

You can also sink a lot of money into fines and problems that can create an issue not only for your company but also for hundreds of bank’s customers or a credit union you are managing.

Creating a good project portfolio management system will allow the manager to not only be competitive in the market but also give the clients some certainty about the state of their finances. We’ve seen many times in recent decades that the dismissive approach to long-term planning by financial institutions resulted in a global economic crisis that took years to fix.

Because of the significant risk that a laissez-faire attitude can result in, financial institutions worldwide are very strict with their project portfolio management. As in the case of a crisis, not only can their entire portfolio go bankrupt, but it can also impact the global economy. It’s a rather doomsday scenario, but it’s not like it didn’t happen before.

On a smaller scale, it can save you a lot of money, plain and simple. It’s the industry that can benefit a lot by getting the right amount of optimization in its planning, as it is essentially money that it is dealing with.

Marketing

And finally we have – marketing. It’s one of the most obvious ones, as it tends to have a lot of different branches to take care of. Sometimes, it’s digital marketing, SEO, some elements of video production, advertisement on the street, creating graphics for clients, etc.

With so many different arrays of work, you can surely see how project portfolio management can benefit this industry. Of course, you can also look at it from the grand scheme of things, where you have a big agency full of different clients to take care of, and you can’t afford to be hyper-focused on each one. It may not be the optimal solution, but it’s a solution for some companies for sure.

So, let’s now talk about the benefits of implementing project portfolio management. We’ve hinted about some of them before, but here we will take a more detailed approach. Of course, this list is not exhaustive, and this tool has plenty of benefits that can be applied in different industries, but those are some of the essential ones.

Defined Goals Completion

One of the key elements of good project portfolio management is that it demands the key stakeholders create specific goals that the company is trying to achieve. And you can’t really achieve any goal without understanding what you want to do.

Project portfolio management creates that goal and aligns all the resources in the company according to them. So, if you have a company that sells cars, for example, you will be able to optimize your car-selling goals while not focusing on the clothing aspect of the business.

No Bias

The main problem when creating a successful business is that different biases can prevent you from achieving your goals. Maybe there is an employee who really isn’t doing much work, but you like them and feel sorry for them, and that’s why you would not fire them.

Well, the project portfolio management analysis would simply put them into the – not efficient – category without resorting to their personality or how hard it would be on their family. The same goes for the projects – you may hold dear the eraser aspect of your pencil industry, but it turns out that no one uses them, and you only lose money on every product.

Project Portfolio Management has no biases and judges everything not on a basis of their character, but the efficiency of their work. That is why it’s the easiest way to optimize your company.

Easier Decision-Making Process

Ad hoc to the last point, it makes the whole decision-making process so much easier if you can simply see on a chart what needs to be done, what brings the company benefits, and which branches are useless. Project planning is all about creating a viable option for the company as a whole, and some stakeholders may have some issues with making tough decisions.

Well, you can simply employ project portfolio management for that particular task. You will quickly see that the decision-making process is not hard because there is no clear pathway to success. It’s hard because of the external, mostly human factors that are holding the business back.

Big Picture

As we have stated before, one of the key elements of project portfolio management is creating a system where you can see the bigger picture and not focus on smaller issues. That way, you will be able to clearly see the company's condition as a whole and how you can combat some of the problems it faces from the bystander perspective rather than someone involved in the process.

That way, you will be able to optimize more efficiently and create a system of project portfolio managers that can share their knowledge on many different aspects of the company as a whole, which may not be quite as visible from the perspective of standard managers taking care of projects.

Here are the steps to create a project portfolio management for your own.

Strategic Goals

First of all, you need to assess the strategic goals for your company and all the projects. When drafting one, think of a bigger picture rather than something small and less significant.

Gather Ideas

Next, you should definitely talk to the key stakeholders on what are some kind of ideas they want to implement and the projects that are supposed to be involved in the project management.

Choose the Best Ones

The key aspect of a project portfolio management process creation is the choice of the best projects for your company to invest in. It will depend on your business and industry. The key thing to remember is that you should not decide with any biases but think about the benefit of the company as a whole.

Portfolio Management

Next step is to find out if the projects are feasible in nature. Check if some of them are too risky, maybe some demand too many resources, maybe some are just not in line with your strategic goals.

Oversight

Finally – you need to manage and oversee the portfolio you are taking care of. It may not be the simplest task, but with the right attitude and a special group of people, it’s feasible to do so. Project managers are key elements in this case, as they often can make or break your project, so be sure to have the right crew to take care of this task.

Thanks for checking out our article on some key elements when it comes to creating a good project portfolio management. As we’ve emphasized many times in the article, the key to using this tool efficiently is to optimize your projects in an unbiased way. A well-crafted project portfolio management can greatly impact the company structure as a whole. Remember that the company's most critical aspect is its business objectives, and everything should be aligned with that.