220
Advanced Project Portfolio Management and the PMO
Table 14.4 Part I — Important Data Elements of the Project Portfolio Data Element
Description
Project Name Status
Description of Program or Project initiative Describes compliance with planned delivery and cost expectations: Red indicates time or cost trends need management intervention. Yellow indicates time or cost trends need investigation Green indicates time or cost trends are within the realm of common cause variation Project Force Rank Prioritization rating assigned by Governance Board. Force rank indicates the order of importance the initiative has relative to the company strategic objectives Project Manager The person responsible for this project Funding Business Unit The organization that pays for the project budget and normally owns the requirements that the project will develop product or service for. Primary Strategic Objective The primary business goal that the initiative is supporting. Primary Supported Asset The primary asset that the initiative is supporting. NPV Net Present Value figure or range of possibilities for this project Cash Flow Projected Cash Flow by year, quarter or month Strategic Resource Utilization, in weeks, of the organization’s strategic Utilization resource (continued)
organization’s goals. In fact, if we can generate enough cash from other projects, perhaps we can subcontract out part of the satellite project. Again, the data gives us possible directions, but does not and should not make the decisions for us. With this background, we can now jump into more detail about the data we will want to maintain about the portfolio.
DATA CHARACTERISTICS AND FREQUENCIES OF THE PORTFOLIO Once a portfolio is established, we need to understand what progress is being made against estimated project schedules. Given that we are reviewing the project level, we need project related tactical data. See Table 14.4. Project data should be collected minimally on a bi-weekly basis. Anything less frequent means less visibility for project delivery threats and opportunities to accelerate.