Managing projects as a portfolio helps ensure alignment, just as flying in formation helps birds stay on course, avoid collisions, and conserve energy.
You’ve seen an alignment problem when expensive projects don’t support strategy, run at cross purposes to each other, or are starving for critical skills. Here’s how you can make alignment happen.
- Align projects with the organization’s strategic objectives and with each other.
- Design a clear intake process for potential new projects. Use agreed-on selection or prioritization criteria that clarify how and why projects get into the portfolio.
- Understand organizational capacity (which includes staffing levels, skills, availability of tools, and risk). Match the projects in the portfolio to the organization’s capacity so that projects will have the resources they need to succeed.
- Keep at it. Portfolio management will not survive unless it is cared for.
There’s more to alignment, but you get the idea. How do you keep projects aligned?