Moderator: A portfolio is a collection of programmes, projects. They can be run at organisational level, for example you might have a portfolio for IT, you might have a portfolio at HR. Or you could have a, a functional level, a, a more of a local level. You might have, for example, a department that has a portfolio to manage staff education, let's say, and the idea of a portfolio is it enables organisations to structure their investments, their management, looks at the capability of an organisation. Portfolios are open-ended, so they're there to deal with all the changes, for example changes in legislation, changes in environment, and they will coordinate and direct multiple related projects, related programmes, and make sure that benefits at a strategic level are realised effectively. Because without those benefits, the projects, the programmes, really wouldn't be viable. We have two projects. A distribution systems project and a storage facility project, they will be managed, directed, by the food distribution programme. We have three projects, a food container project, an advertising campaign, and a container production-line project. Those three projects are related, they will be managed by the food container programme. The programmes will then report to the product-development portfolio, the portfolio will manage both of the programmes but also the delivery infrastructure project directly because that project is not related to any of the programmes within the portfolio. Jo, you've been involved in project management best practice for the last ten years?

Jo Saunders: I have and actually I've, I've count the years I've been in project management or in the project manager arena for 25 years. I've worked both in the public and private sector, and I've worked on a very wide range of products. But, yeah, in the last ten years it's been very much focusing on, on sort of best practice.

Moderator: What is portfolio management and why is it important?

Jo Saunders: So when I worked for a budget airline, we had a wide range of projects and programmes happening in the business and there was no helicopter view of those. So, what we did was we put in a level of portfolio management so that we could take each of these initiatives, prioritise them, make sure they were strategically aligned to, to the corporate objectives. And the importance of that is that you're protecting your investment, you're making sure that only the most important pieces of work are happening, they're happening at the right time, and that you're using the limited resources you have intelligently.

Moderator: And what are the benefits of portfolio management?

Jo Saunders: Well, really portfolio management is, is great when you've got limited resource because you can make sure those resources are allocated intelligently across the pieces of work that you have, you can prioritise the projects. So, you know operational survival projects get the priority rather than, sort of, market competitiveness projects, 'cause if you can't survive if you can't be in the market. And it makes sure that we've got a balance between risk and, and benefit, you know, we want this benefit but is it-, do we understand the level of risk that we're going to take to get that benefit?

Moderator: So, clearly without effective portfolio management in place we could lose the strategic connection with these projects and programmes, have projects and programmes that don't add value to the organisation, and in turn not realise the benefits that these projects and programmes were intended to deliver?

Portfolios | PMAPMIC-BL |

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