I compiled this list for some of my MGT562 students who are interested in learning more about project portfolio management. This is not necessarily a comprehensive or even-handed treatment – I pulled from my bookshelf a stack of books that I have acquired over the years. Some of these are not directly about portfolio management – they address related areas. This list is not in any particular order, and definitely not in APA format!
The PMOSIG Program Management Office Handbook, edited by Letavec and Bolles
This is a collection of contributed chapters about the role of a PMO, which includes portfolio management. The chapters cover a wide variety of PMO topics – governance, strategy, tactics, services, setup and execution of a PMO, and how to improve PMO performance and maturity. PPLF member Robert Tresente contributed to this book.
Portfolio Management for New Products 2e, Cooper, Edgett, Kleinschmidt
This is one of the pioneering books about systematic management of project portfolios (the first edition was in the 1990’s.). It is all in the context of new product development, especially consumer goods.
Mastering Project Portfolio Management, Bible and Bivins
This book has helpful chapters explaining how to use ratio scale measurements and the analytic hierarchy process to come up with criteria weighting. It walks through techniques for strategic planning, screening, selection, implementation, and evaluation.
It has a heavy emphasis on using Expert Choice’s software, so some sections have many distracting screen shots showing how to use the software to implement the topic of the chapter.
Project Portfolio Management: A View from the Management Trenches, Pennypacker and Retna, eds.
Overview of PPM, the PPM process, strategic alignment, capacity and resource management, dealing with change, benefits realization, and operating considerations (how to build a business case for PPM, design a PPM process, and implement and maintain portfolio management); all woven together with a fable to illustrate some of the points.
Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO, Kendall and Rollins
- PMO development, implementation, and maintenance.
- Techniques for selecting a good mix of projects.
- Case studies.
Effectiveness in Project Portfolio Management, Patanakul, Curtis, and Koppel
This is an academic study on how to define and measure the effectiveness of portfolio management implementations. It studies PPM at five organizations, summarizes their approaches, looks at the factors impacting effectiveness , and discusses ways to measure effectiveness.
Strategic Leadership of Portfolio and Project Management, Kloppenborg and Laning
This book touches on an entire bookshelf of management topics, so the treatment of each is fairly introductory. It includes some material about portfolio management. The target audience is executives who want to link strategy to action. The book is a mashup of concepts from portfolio management, sponsorship, project management, quality management, voices of the customer and employees, process management, and decision-making.
Winning at New Products, Cooper
This book is about the product development process including stage gates. It has several chapters relating to selecting projects (portfolio construction). Cooper is heavily focused on new product development.
Project Sponsorship, Englund and Bucero
This book’s target audience is managers and executives who are sponsors of a project or program.
This book is not about PMO’s or portfolios, but I include it in this list because effective sponsorship of projects is important to portfolio execution. Sponsorship has consistently been a topic of great interest to my students, either because they want to learn how to be a good project sponsor or how to teach the accidental sponsor of a project what he or she needs to do.
The Standard for Portfolio Management, 4th edition, Project Management Institute
This PMI standard follows Cooper pretty closely but adds some material on managing risk at the portfolio level. It is written as a standard and is extremely dry.
revised 10/2/2024