Why PPM is important?

Learning that day after day companies all around the globe choose to take on board project management solutions should not be a surprise at all. Even the most successful firms have seen how they become more efficient and effective by simply adding a Project Management team to their organization charts.

Despite that still it is shocking how some business continue to have their backs turned to Project management solutions not opening themselves nor giving themselves a chance to experience a whole new level of work environment and goal achievement.

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is most likely the reason why so many CEOs/stakeholders/managers see their targets being accomplished and their companies change completely in a short period of time after its implementation moving forward faster and stronger.

Project portfolio management by now shouldn’t need no introduction but for those still in doubt here you’ll find a few reasons why project portfolio management is so important in a modern company.

To summarize, PPM is a system of tools that combines in a centralized approach the key factors that make a project successful. It holds different processes and methods to help your business react to change with the necessary speed and accuracy to succeed.

PPM managers main task is to evaluate current and new projects, alongside with the challenging responsibility of planning, prioritizing, staffing work, monitoring costs and progress, analyzing work results among others.

Probably the first change you will notice when implementing PPM to your company is how workers or departments (depending on business sizes or organization chart) suddenly collaborate more often than they compete.

Having different projects running at the same time can and most likely will, turn into a toxic atmosphere or a race against the clock between project groups.

Although this might sound to some as the way to get quick results there are actually better ways of getting the same effect if not better without damaging the work environment which can potentially be harder to fix in a long run.

PPM blocks this false feeling of competition guaranteeing the alignment between projects focusing on the targets and evaluating the different needs of each project. Project portfolio management provides real-time access to the necessary and relevant information that each individual needs to complete its tasks and move forward without having to rely on quick meetings to get update.

These simple actions of linking the teams, giving workers full autonomy of their daily duties and keeping teams focused on the main goal also takes us to another strong reason why PPM is so important, and it’s the amazing overview you get over your company and what’s happening at any time.

Project portfolio management creates a “real-time project update” system that naturally flows between workers and the firm. It gathers information about each project and its progress, and analyzes it on a daily basis.

Our routine difficulties and obstacles can easily make us loose track of the main targets, PPM managers have a very important role of helping and supporting decisions based on the long-term goals. This view over the evolution of the different elements and fitting it into the company’s vision of the future, make decision-making simpler and helps detecting unnecessary projects and stop them sooner.

Being up to date with what is happening in your business puts you in a great position to use your resources and investment on the adequate projects and it immediately minimizes risks. If you didn’t have so far enough reasons to realize why PPM is important, this one should be more than enough.

Any business wants maximum benefits and minimum risks. We all know it is impossible and finding a balance between these is probably one of the biggest challenges of any company. It is undeniable that Project portfolio management is a necessary tool for the constant search for this balance.

The continuous project analysis involves also analyzing costs versus benefits and this helps identifying the projects that are more difficult to predict. The earliest you identify them the sooner you can implement changes or even stop the project before it starts reducing automatically either the cost of the project or what it would cost the firm if it went wrong.

Project managers will alert you if you are exposing to budget surpassing, non-viable efforts, schedule delays; before the project starts or during its lifespan helping focusing on the high-benefit/low-risk search.

Another important feature of having a PPM tool in your business is the capability of this tool to capture talent/ideas. If you take a closer look to your workers you will realize that there is more potential in them than you though.

Every company is full of ideas than can help not only improving but also achieving the company’s vision of the future. If you think about it, looking for new projects and ideas within the company is using resources that you already have and pay for. Finding these ideas is highly beneficial for both company and employees.

PPM is a great tool to develop an effective process of idea capturing as it will centralize the project selection. This will increase the project proposals which will enrich the project portfolio leaving project managers the task of filtering the proposals and turn them into new projects ready to be start its developments in due corse.

PPM will become an essential part of your company from day 1 and a strong reason why it will be achieving its goals faster. It is proven that project portfolio management is a great tool easily adapted to any type of company or business need. It’s implementations will help organizing and optimizing as well as working on creating a better business environment always focusing on your company’s vision of the future.

The question is not “why is PPM important?” is “why your company is not already using PPM?”