Then how to succeed? Successful projects are united by good portfolio management. In the long run, project portfolio management focuses on project prioritisation.

Yield / input / risk ratio management. That is why there is a need for a Business Case, Budget and Resource Plan and its implementation, as well as monitoring of the probability and impact of project risks.

Good maintenance and management of data required for reporting prioritisation enable sufficient reporting and analysis, based on which fact-based decisions can be made.

All project managers are good – some are just better

A good project manager understands that reporting is part of good project management and not mandatory bureaucracy. The level of reporting and analysis is at the portfolio level in portfolio management. The input data is generated at the project level, but decisions are made according to the overall situation.

The overall situation is supported by data from other portfolios and this data could typically include overall risks, resources, capabilities, strategic and financial objectives, qualitative and operational effectiveness, schedules and, most importantly, timing.

At the right time in the right place

Timing is essential – the best idea but at the wrong time does not release its potential, and the objective used to justify the idea will most probably not be achieved. Nevertheless, it is clear that the majority of ideas always fail, but it should not be because of timing.

Wrong timing may mean starting too early or too late. Good portfolio management helps identify the correct timing for the whole. So timing is essential in decision making. Therefore, it is important that the time dimension is described in the portfolio and included in the data model.

Only well communicated decisions succeed

Decision making is first and foremost about communication. If a good decision cannot be communicated correctly, the decision will not be implemented, and the objective not reached. Since decisions arise from the overall situation, the situational picture must be available to people. When the background and premises of a decision are understandable and clear, it is possible to commit to the decision or, if necessary, oppose it. When the situational picture is clear to everyone, the reasons for the decisions are also available to everyone. The decision does not always necessarily have to please everyone, but the reasons for it must be clear.

Portfolio management is 80% about looking forward and 20% about assessing the outcome.

Portfolio management is first and foremost about looking forward, prioritisation and decisions are always related to the future. It is good to look backward and assess the outcome of what has been done and thus ensure that guiding measures and decisions related to the future are based on the correct current state. The majority of learning also takes place by retrospectively assessing how things were done. This ensures that the same spot will not be bruised twice in the future.

A successful organisation has an overall picture of portfolio management.

Good portfolio management combines all the portfolios of an organisation. Typical portfolios include project, investment, risk, resource, innovation, strategy, metric, service, NPD, product, application and technology portfolios, HRD and capability portfolios. The integrations between these and the connecting Dashboards provide the necessary starting points for successful decision making.

And finally, the already familiar old wisdom: Excel worksheets are not today’s information management and portfolio management is already commonplace. Now more interconnected portfolios are gaining in importance and it is increasingly common to take advantage of everyday agility, e.g. Kanban boards in all different portfolios as part of task management or performance monitoring. Capability management is already part of today’s resource planning, because competence is useful only when it is in the right place. It is not most essential to ponder what everyone’s workload is, but if a person’s competence is in the right place. Productivity is quite different when people are allowed to do what they know well and what matters to them.