Communicating IT’s value using Project Portfolio Management

An article titled “How I Used Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Software to Prevent IT Staff Cuts” on CIO.com that describes using Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tools to communicate the value of IT. The CIO article describes the use of PPM tools by Robert Biles to show his leadership what his team does and how they … Read more

Project Selection using Decision Support & Optimization Techniques

This post is an excerpt (with slight modifications) of a recent paper titled “Project Selection using Decision Support Optimization Tools.” If you’d like to read the full paper, click here for the PDF version of Project Selection using Decision Support Optimization Tools.  The full version of the paper has full details of the LINGO model used for decision support and project selection optimization.

During good times and bad, selecting the proper projects to undertake is an extremely important activity for organizations.  Selecting the right projects  (or wrong ones) can be the difference between success and failure for most organizations.  The process of selecting projects and managing the project portfolio, formally called Project Portfolio Management, can help organizations get a grasp on their projects and the risk & benefits associated with those projects [1].

Project Portfolio management and selection has become an important part of most organization’s project management activities. By managing their project portfolio’s correctly, organizations can gather information about all projects, prioritize those projects and manage the selected projects throughout the project lifecycle.

The remainder of this paper provides an overview on project selection and describes a prototype system that can be used to optimize the selection of projects.  The project selection prototype uses optimization techniques to select the optimal number of projects based on given criteria.

Read more

Strategic Project Management

This is an excerpt of a paper I wrote while working on my MBA. To read the entire article, download the PDF titled “Strategic Project Management.” Strategic Project Management (SPM) (also called Enterprise Project Management by some) has been defined by Callahan & Brooks (2004) as “the use of the appropriate project management knowledge, skills, … Read more