What Makes A Project Portfolio Difficult To Manage?

Project portfolio management is easier than it looks. Businesses often face a number of challenges when it comes to managing their project portfolio effectively. If you want to keep your project portfolio under control it is important that you identify the difficulties of challenges that you are facing with your project portfolio. Sometimes, there could be too many issues that project managers end up confused about what the real problem is. Here are a few challenges that can make managing your project portfolio difficult.

Too many projects at once

One of the biggest challenges in portfolio management arises when there are multiple projects that need to be taken care of at the same time. Sometimes, lack of a PMO leaves the responsibility of project portfolio management on the individual project managers. Sometimes, one project manager is left to handle multiple projects at the same time, which results in lack of focus and a failure to deliver.

Lack of senior management support

At times, the lack of senior management buy-in of the requirements as stated by project managers can also lead to poor portfolio management. Senior management’s lack of understanding of the benefits of having a PMO or necessary resources, manpower or budget can also make it difficult to manage project portfolio of the organization. Also, support for one project and none for another can also make it difficult for project managers to manage their project portfolios efficiently.

Misallocation of resources

Lack of resources or sharing of the same resource for multiple projects can also create trouble for project managers in an organization. Misallocation of resources, especially when more than one project is being handled by a project manager at a time, can lead to misallocation of resources – under or over allocation of manpower, tools etc – to the project. This can prevent one team from delivering results and can hamper the overall productivity of the project manager.

In-house politics

The biggest challenge that a project manager or PMO can face with project portfolio management is in-house politics and the company culture. These two things can prevent adoption of new and innovative strategies and technology that can make project management easier and management of multiple projects efficient. Resistance to the new technology or strategies, basically change, can prevent progress of a project or more, thereby making it hard for the organization to handle its project portfolio efficiently.