I think peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are best when the peanut butter is spread thickly. Portfolio management is the same way. Spreading your organization’s precious resources thinly over too many active projects is a recipe for disappointment. It’s better to concentrate effort and resources, even if that means fewer projects.
Here is how experienced portfolio managers keep the peanut butter from getting spread too thin.
- Say no. Teach your organization how to say “no” or “later” to projects that are good, but not as good as the best. This requires a combination of good interpersonal skills and hard-nosed analysis.
- Maximize and balance. Analyze the portfolio using methods that maximize its value and balance it across important characteristics. For example, you can create a portfolio map plotting risk vs. reward for each project, or you can show the distribution of projects that will “keep the lights on”, make incremental improvements to an existing capability, or cause transformation.
- Just right. Aim for the “Goldilocks” spot for project selection criteria (not too many and not too few). Ensure that these criteria reflect the true value of projects to the business, thus allowing them to be compared in a useful and fair way.
- Innovate. Protect some portfolio resources for projects that are innovative but may take extra time to pay off, for example by creating an innovation sandbox.
How do you keep your organization’s portfolio of work (whether projects or something else) focused instead of spread too thin? I’d love to hear your thoughts.