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A CLOUD COACH ARTICLE

Project Portfolio Management Tool

Before delving into the benefits of project portfolio management tools, you need to understand what project portfolio management is. Many businesses have more than one project going on at any given time. This is especially true for larger businesses that have more departments, teams, and employees that can work on different projects.

Project portfolio management (PPM) is a technique for managing all these projects from one centralized location. In other words, PPM allows your project managers, executives, and stakeholders to have an overview of your ongoing projects without needing to speak to individuals working on each project. This can help improve resource management and help you prioritize which projects should be completed first by simply reviewing what each project needs and the return on its completion.

So, what are PPM tools, and why are they important? PPM tools allow you to implement project portfolio management into your current system without creating an entirely new software solution in-house. There are a number of these tools available today, and you can find a PPM tools list online that offers overviews of the features and tools included in each solution. But how do you know which tool is best for your organization’s project management system?

Realistically, no single tool is the best option for all businesses. Because of this, you will need to compare a few tools to find the best one for your business. Luckily, you do not have to go into finding these types of tools completely blind. There are a few characteristics that any good PPM tool will have, and you can use these to filter your options until you find the right tool. These characteristics are:

Easy organization into portfolios
ROI scorecards
Straightforward prioritization tools
Demand intake and approval management tools
Easy-to-use dashboard where you can see the big picture of all of your projects
Project timelines and tracking

What Is Project Portfolio Management?

If you are unfamiliar with the term, you may be wondering what is project portfolio management exactly? Project portfolio management (PPM) is the centralization of project management for your organization. In other words, project portfolio management is the process that your project managers, teams, stakeholders, and executives can use to manage all of your ongoing — and future — projects in one place.

This is incredibly important for businesses with more than one project going at a time because it can help ensure that the right resources are going to the right projects. Additionally, PPM is a great way to help mitigate risks within your projects because you can check in on them regularly without tracking down specific employees who may be in charge of them for an update. This means you can lessen the possibility of something going wrong or an issue snowballing over time and ruining an entire project.

Project portfolio management is an invaluable tool for your project management organizers and managers because it allows them to see an overall picture of each project and consolidate all project details in one area. This allows your teams to assess the risks better and return on a specific project, which allows your project managers to make informed decisions on where to allocate the resources you have.

ADDITIONAL LINKS

Project Portfolio Management Process

Project portfolio management is a way to ensure that projects are completed at the right times to maximize your investments. In a way, it is how you can bridge the gap between your strategies and the implementation of those strategies. At its core, the project portfolio management process is quite straightforward. Rather than allowing all the data and resources for your various projects to be held in separate locations, PPM helps you consolidate them into one single space. This allows you to more easily take stock of the most important projects at any given time and allocate resources accordingly.

While you could create your own PPM solution — such as an extremely elaborate Microsoft Excel sheet — it can be much easier and more efficient to utilize an existing PPM tool. Not only can these tools help you more effectively manage your projects, but they are also more intuitive. This means you can spend more time looking at the details and overviews of your projects than searching for any information on a particular program. Because project portfolio management can look different for each company, the PPM tool requirements you need from a tool may differ from another company’s requirements.

Project Portfolio Management Software

While project portfolio management can be an irreplaceable process in your project management strategies, it can be daunting to implement a process that is this widespread and comprehensive on your own. Luckily, there are several PPM applications, software solutions, and tools on the market today that can help you reap the benefits of project portfolio management without having to create an entirely new system on your own. But how can you know that you are getting the best PPM software for your business? After all, if you are going to invest in something as big as project portfolio management for your organization, you likely want to ensure that you are getting the absolute best solution.

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to project portfolio management. The best solution for your company may not be the best solution for another company. Because of this, choosing your PPM tool or software solution is one of the most crucial parts of this process. You will want to compare various PPM tool options and look for the one that offers you the best set of tools and features for your needs. One way to discover some of the most highly rated tools and solutions is to look at Gartner’s PPM magic quadrant. This page highlights the most highly-rated and well-known PPM tools to compare their offerings and find the best option for your organization’s particular needs.

Benefits Of Project Portfolio Management

Anytime you think about introducing a new system into your business, you will want to know how that strategy or process can improve your current system. Project portfolio management is a process that can bring many benefits to your organization because it helps to streamline project management. Many portfolio management examples online highlight exactly how PPM tools can improve project management. This said, in general, the most commonly highlighted benefits of portfolio management are:

Better viewing of the big picture of your projects
Improved demand intake
Increased organization through portfolios
Improved ROI tracking
Increased ability to prioritize projects effectively
Approval management
Better project execution tracking
Improved resource allocation and management

While these are not the only benefits of project portfolio management, they are typically the advantages that companies notice right away after implementing a PPM solution into their project management processes. Because project portfolio management can improve your project management processes in so many ways, it is no surprise that many businesses utilize this approach to manage their projects. It is important to note that there are various PPM tools on the market today, and finding the best tool for your organization will require some time and comparison. While you could simply opt for the first PPM tool you see, if you want to get the absolute best experience and obtain the most benefits, you will want to take the time to select the right tool for your business.

Project Portfolio Management Example

When you are looking to implement your own PPM tools, examples you can find online can be invaluable. While these examples may not be exactly the same as the tools you are looking at, they can help you understand how a PPM tool may work and what features could be the most useful to your business. Finding a project portfolio management example can be a good way to understand what a PPM tool may offer regarding features and organizational processes. This can help you determine which type of PPM tool you may also want to focus your search on.

It is also important to note that there are both premium and free PPM tools, and you may find that a free PPM tool offers you all the features you need to improve your project management. However, you may find that you need something more advanced after using a free PPM tool for some time. In this case, you will want to start looking at premium tools. If you are unsure of what type of PPM tool you are looking for, a free tool can be a good way to test out some of the features and help you decide what characteristics are the most important for your business before investing in a premium tool.

Best PPM Tools

With so many different PPM software vendors on the market today, finding the best project portfolio management tool for your business can be intimidating. It can be helpful to use online lists or “top 10 PPM tools” articles as a starting point in your search because these lists can help narrow down the number of individual tools you are comparing. When looking for the best PPM tools for your business, you will want to pay close attention to the features and characteristics of each tool you are considering. This is because not all solutions will offer the same features, and each will likely have a different way of organizing and displaying your information.

You may want to take the time to focus on the project portfolio management tools and techniques that are the most important for your organization before looking closely at any PPM tools. This can be a great way to ensure that you know exactly what you are looking for before you even begin your search. This can help you filter out solutions that do not focus on these particular tools more effectively. For example, suppose the most important pieces of a PPM tool for you are viewing the big picture and easy prioritization. In that case, you can focus on only the tools that offer the most intuitive interfaces for these two areas of project portfolio management.