Project Portfolio Management

As Tom Peters said, all white collar work is project work, PPM is a multi-project management facility that is suitable for the management of all kinds of work that aren’t organized as assembly lines.

PM can assemble a set of elements to a project and disassemble a project into a set of elements in real-time. Similarly, PPM can assemble sets of elements to a program or portfolio and disassemble a program or portfolio into sets of elements in real-time. PPM can align project elements with business objectives and strategies and meet time, resource and cost constraints and legal obligations at the same time. The granularity of visibility and control is important since a commitment is late one day at a time and a budget is overrun one item at a time. Being able to see the variance from the lowest level to the highest level in real-time time can possibly decide a portfolio’s success or failure.

PPM has built-in sales, procurement and management accounting functions and can perform project-based sales and procurement and can compute and aggregate financial information to generate income statement, account receivable, account payable and cash flow reports in real-time.

When PPM is used together with CRM, one can perform pre-sales, sales or post-sales project management to ensure the underlying projects are aligned with the pre-sales, sales or post-sales objectives and strategies. Professional Service Automation (PSA) is a special realization of how PPM together with CRM to form a specialized portfolio management for professional service business.

When PPM is used together with e-Procurement, one can perform pre-procurement, procurement and post-procurement project management to ensure the underlying projects are aligned with the pre-procurement, procurement and post-procurement objectives and strategies. Total Outsourcing Management (TOM) is a special realization of using e-Procurement and PPM to form a specialized portfolio management for outsourcing programs.

PM can assemble a set of elements to a project and disassemble a project into a set of elements in real-time.  Similarly, PPM can assemble sets of elements to a program or portfolio and disassemble a program or portfolio into sets of elements in real-time.  All functionality, such as  structured collaboration, scope & requirements management, time management, dependency management, cost management, quality management, communication management, resource management, risk management, procurement management, issue management and change management, that is available in PM (for single project management) is also available in PPM (for multi-project management). allows user-defined policies to disallow unwanted behavior and filter out erroneous input.  In other words, uses symmetry and computer speed to manage the essential complexity of multi-project management and policies to avoid accidental complexity in multi-project management as much as possible.

PPM provides the following cross-project and cross-enterprise management facilities for business and strategy planning and execution:

VPMO allows the user to track and drill drown the following details of its underlying projects individually or collectively:

VPMO also provides the following dashboards for analysis or reporting purpose:

All tracking, drilling-down and dashboards are in real-time and based on centralized real-time data.  For example, if multiple users are clicking the same command in the same VPMO at the same time, the exact same information will be displayed on their screens.  If a deliverable was submitted  by a team member sub-second before the manager is clicking to view the deliverable or its associated activity/project/VPMO, the up-to-date information (deliverable was submitted) will be displayed on the manager’s screen.

’s centralized real-time linked data provide the highest level of information integrity for managers to manage accountability.

PMO has all VPMO functionality.  In addition, PMO allows the user to define the following to be used by all its underlying projects :

PMO also allows the user to define the following types of policies for the consistent management of all its underlying projects:

PMO helps the user totally avoid the inconsistent use of terms and measures in projects that would lead to confusions and reinforce selected policies to control the consistent execution of the projects.

Using PMO, the user can achieve the following for multi-project management:

• Better align projects with the goals that the user defined in the critical success factors (CSF
• Able to detect problematic projects at the earliest possible time
• More effective judgment and decisions due to better information
• More effective resource management (right people for the right jobs)

PMO provides the peer and management visibility to allow proper management of accountability and constraints in multi-project environment.

CP supports the management of the following types of contracts:

And CP also supports the management of contract’s underlying projects, revenues, costs, deliverables and service level agreements (SLA).

The common scenarios for using CP include:

• Large and complex deal management (an order is a project)
• Major outsourcing program (multi-year service deliveries)

CP allows the tracking of the following:

CP provides the visibility and controls to allow proper management of incremental results to meet the business objectives and constraints.

SP provides a goal-directed structure for you to plan and execute your strategy and sub-strategies. Under SP Goal Directed Structure, your strategy, sub-strategies, contracts, projects, subprojects, activities, and deliverables are tightly linked. Their resources, costs, returns and KPI can be observed and aggregated in real-time. Using the 8thManage® Goal-Directed Structure, you can direct your strategy and sub-strategy execution without worrying about deviation and hidden bad-performance.

SP provides a prioritization and business attention facility to help: 

• Prioritize projects
• Detect problematic projects
• Make “go” or “no go” decisions

SP provides an automated business forecasting capability to allow you to double check the schedule, revenue, cost, profit against the latest re-forecasts that have been reported.

For decision support, SP allows the actual results of the strategy execution can be seen in real-time.