Introduction

For what is essentially a framework, project management has a wide variety of methodologies, viewpoints and procedures. Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is a framework that seeks to allow a projects to be managed in much the same way as a portfolio of diverse financial investments.

Mostly PPM is used to support IT projects in many industries. It allows organisations to align their IT and application development projects as well as resource allocation by developing and monitoring measures that treat IT like financial assets in a project-oriented business.

Industry penetration within the financial community varied. In some banks, PPM is well established; while in other PPM forms the basis of a hybrid, proprietary project management methodology. While other banks, seemingly in the same tier, reported no knowledge of PPM or ‘treating IT like a portfolio.’

Key findings

• PPM – PPM allows IT to be treated like a business asset rather than a cost centre
• Timesheets - Third-party and propriety systems use PPM tools for time sheets
• Risk Management - Moving on from timesheets, many banks are looking at using PPM tools for risk management projects.

Conclusion

PPM can be valuable to banks because it puts IT at the heart of business decisions and treats IT as an asset rather than a cost centre. PPM is a well-known and well used format. PPM can offer a easy to follow and use methodology that produces results that are easy to understand from a business point of view.

There are a fair number of PPM tools available on the market. Two that were mentioned include Atremis and Clarity. However, banks are not shy about adapting those tools for their own environments. While PPM is well used, it does not seem to have passionate advocates within the financial community outside of providers of PPM tools. PPM is used at banks because it is part of a legacy methodology that seems to work well. Use of third party PPM tools for functions other than timesheets for projects is not that common, Lepus found. However, there is same evidence that PPM is being used for tracking risk management IT projects.

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Tagged with: 2009, Project management, Technology Research Report