projectportfoliomanagement

Projectportfoliomanagement, often written as project portfolio management and abbreviated as PPM, is a centralized approach to selecting, prioritizing, and governing a set of projects and programs to deliver strategic value. It coordinates scarce resources, balances risk and reward, and steers investments toward objectives rather than individual initiatives.

PPM differs from traditional project management by focusing on the entire portfolio rather than a single project. It aligns work with strategy, caps demand, and provides governance over funding and scope changes.

Core activities include an intake process for proposals, evaluation and scoring against criteria such as strategic fit, value, risk, and cost, prioritization, and resource allocation. Ongoing governance and performance monitoring ensure benefits realization and risk exposure are tracked.

Approaches combine financial models (ROI, NPV) with non-financial criteria and may adopt agile or hybrid methods for cross-team coordination. PPM is described in standards and guidance from professional bodies and may be implemented using dedicated portfolio management tools.

Benefits include improved strategic alignment, better resource utilization, higher transparency about value delivery, and enhanced ability to respond to change. Common challenges are data quality, changing priorities, governance overhead, and ensuring stakeholder engagement.

Key metrics often include ROI, NPV, benefits realization, capacity utilization, and delivery performance against time and budget.