What you need

Folder 1  |  Folder 2  |  Folder 3 

💡 Idea  |  📜 Meeting  |  📖 Lessons Learned  |  ❗ Important

Portfolio:  Portfolio A  |  Portfolio B |  Portfolio C 
Analyse: Dringlichkeit:  particularly high |  high  |  medium |  low  |  minimal
Analyse: Strategie:  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5 ...
Analyse: Budget:  1  |  2  |  3  |  4  |  5 ...  

Bubble Chart: Analyse

Details

Project portfolio management in companies 

Project-oriented companies include projects in the strategic decision-making processes of all corporate divisions. It is about a holistic view of the company's project portfolio in order to optimally support the core business. 

Project portfolio management in the project life cycle 

If we look at the Project Life Cycle, a project can start very early as an idea. 

This means that the course for the "right" projects is set at the very beginning of the process. Here the question of effectiveness "Are we doing the right projects?" or "Which projects fit best to the company's goals?" plays the central role. In the processes of multi- and single-project management, the question of efficiency "Are we doing the projects right? 

It is about the optimal mix of projects which, under defined conditions such as customer requirements, strategic goals of the company, available investment volume and available resources, etc., makes the greatest value contribution to the company.  

Tip: 

We recommend creating a separate flavor for portfolio management, e.g. "Portfolio". This makes it very easy to categorize and evaluate your projects using filters and graphics. 

But also important products or services are ideal for categorizing your projects.

Project portfolio management is thus a central instrument of corporate management. Essentially, it deals with the following core questions: 

• Which projects and plans implement our strategy in the best possible way? 
• What is the status of the current project portfolio measured against the defined corporate and project goals?
• Where is there potential for optimization? 
• Are resources optimally used and not overloaded? 
• How is experience from past projects used to improve future projects? 
• Where is there an urgent need for action at program or project level? 
• Where can risks and risk accumulations become dangerous? 
• What financial burdens and investments should be planned for the next budget periods and are they realistic?  

Portfolio - evaluate projects 

How you can create a portfolio analysis in smenso cloud according to your requirements, you can find in this article: 

• Project Analysis 

Portfolio - putting together projects 

The flavors of the projects evaluated in this way can now be evaluated in the Analysis tab at project / portfolio level. If you need more points for the analysis, you can directly create more flavors with criteria. So you can use labels if you want to display several criteria (e.g. strategic goals 🎯):

In portfolio management, one of the most commonly used charts is the bubble chart. It is best suited to find out which projects should or should not be started. 

You can define the flavors of the X and Y axis yourself. We recommend the following flavors: 

• Urgency (X axis) 
• Strategy (Y axis) 
• Budget (bubble size) 

The statement is as simple as it is cool. The further a project is located in the upper right corner, the "better" and more important it is. The bubble size also represents the budget of the project. 

Using filters for additional flavors (e.g. portfolio), labels as shown above or individually selected, you can easily "load" the desired projects into the graphic and evaluate them directly 

Portfolio - Resources Availability / Utilization 

An essential point when designing the project portfolio is to ensure the availability of the required resources. You can do this either via the Utilization view in the Portfolio Timeline or via the Analysis tab in the Portfolio.  

There you can easily check whether important project resources are available in the desired project period. 

Portfolio - Simulation 

With the function "Duplicate Project" you can copy an existing project as often as you like. Since resources are important for a simulation, you should copy the resources as well.  

We recommend to name the project [Simulation] and to give it a label so that all involved persons can see that it is a simulation.  

Through these simulation projects you can analyze different situations. It is important to filter exactly those projects that are important for the analysis. The easiest way to do this is via labels and flavors, but you can also select the projects manually via the project filter. 

 Exemplary questions of a simulation: 

• What effects does a project postponement have on resource utilization? 
  (Portfolio Timeline or Projects -> Analysis -> Monthly resource utilization) 
• How do they shift project costs to the months? 
  (Projects -> Analysis -> Monthly project cost overview) 
• Which projects are influenced by a simulation (portfolio timeline) 

Note: By copying the project, the tasks of the [Simulation] appear in the tasks for the corresponding persons. Here we are currently working on a corresponding function on the roadmap, so that the tasks of the simulation projects do not appear with the users. 

Portfolio - structuring 

You have certainly already noticed how important the presentation of the projects or the portfolio in the overview is.  

For this purpose we give best practices for different project types. 

Because the last used view is saved in smenso Cloud, you can adjust the portfolio according to your own needs.  

Thanks to the labels and flavors you now get even more structure in your projects. Create e.g. flavors for the following fields: 

• Portfolio (A, B, C, ...) 
• Strategy (A, B, C, ...) 
• Project category (large, medium, small) 
• Project class (A, B, C) 
• Priority (low, medium, high, very high) 
• Methods (agile, classic, hybrid) 
• Country (Germany, USA, China, ...) 
• Client (Customer (internal, external, ...) 
• Product (Product A, Product B, ...) 
• Service (DL 1, DL 2, ...) 
• and much more 

The boundaries are only in your imagination 🦄 

Soon flavors will also be possible as a grouping 👍