As organizations scale, aligning various projects to the overall business strategy is critical. Enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) provides that alignment.
By managing projects, programs, and portfolios centrally, you gain visibility into work across the enterprise which enables you to optimize resources and drive strategy execution.
With EPPM, you can take inventory of all projects, prioritize and align them to objectives, appoint teams, and monitor progress. While an enterprise project management office oversees the system. EPPM brings predictability, control, and other benefits.
In this article, we’ll discuss EPPM in detail covering what it entails as well as the process, importance, benefits, challenges, software, and how to choose the right software.
What is Enterprise Project Portfolio Management (EPPM)?
Enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) is a centralized approach to managing all projects and portfolios across an enterprise to align them with your strategic business objectives.
With EPPM, you get complete visibility into all work happening across different departments, business units, and teams. This enables you to make strategic decisions on which projects to prioritize, how to allocate resources optimally, and how to drive strategy execution through the delivery of key programs and projects.
EPPM provides executive insights into the project portfolio and empowers data-driven decision-making. It also facilitates governance through standardized and streamlined processes for project ideation, selection, approval, and monitoring giving you enhanced control and predictability over the portfolio.
By managing projects, resources, and portfolios holistically, EPPM helps drive strategy realization and business success as organizations scale. It is overseen by an enterprise project management office.
What is an Enterprise Project Portfolio Office (EPPO)?
The Enterprise Project Portfolio Office (EPPO) is a group that oversees the enterprise project portfolio management system and processes.
It is a centralized management office with specialized skills that enables organizations to implement EPPM to maximize the business value delivered through projects effectively.
The key responsibilities of the EPPO include:
- Developing standardized processes for portfolio management
- Maintaining visibility into all organizational projects and resources
- Optimizing the project portfolio alignment with business strategy
- Establishing project approval and governance protocols
- Managing project intake and prioritization
- Allocating resources and budgets across projects
- Providing status reporting and insights to executives
- Identifying and addressing portfolio risks and issues
- Driving continuous improvement in portfolio management
Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Process
The enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) process provides a standardized approach to managing projects, programs, and portfolios across the enterprise.
The key steps involved in the EPPM process are:
1. Project Inventory
The first step is to create a comprehensive project inventory which is a list of all active and proposed projects across the organization. This will include details such as the project goals, timelines, resources required, business drivers, and expected outcomes.
Reviewing the inventory gives you visibility into all work happening enterprise-wide and enables you to identify potential alignment issues, redundancies, or resource conflicts early.
2. Strategic Alignment
Next, the project inventory is mapped to strategic business goals and objectives. You can then clearly see which projects align and which don’t.
Projects that align move forward. Those that don’t can be deprioritized, postponed, or canceled ensuring that resources are focused on strategy-aligned work.
3. Prioritization
The aligned project list is then prioritized based on factors like expected business impact, cost, resources required, and timelines.
High-priority, high-value projects are accelerated while low-value projects may be descoped, combined, or delayed. This portfolio optimization ensures efforts stay focused on driving enterprise strategy.
4. Team Assignment
Once projects are approved and prioritized, project managers and teams are officially assigned, and responsibilities for delivery are established.
5. Launch and Monitoring
The prioritized project portfolio is then executed by teams across the enterprise. The EPPM system enables real-time monitoring of project health, resource allocation, budget versus actuals, and tracking against milestones and metrics.
Course corrections can be made quickly if projects go off track. Lessons learned are also captured throughout to drive continuous improvement.
6. Reporting and Governance
Lastly, centralized visibility into portfolio performance, risks, and issues enables data-driven governance. Leadership can guide decisions at the enterprise level to keep strategy on track.
This end-to-end EPPM process enables organizations to optimize, prioritize, and deliver strategic projects efficiently at scale.
Importance of Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
Enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) is crucial for organizations looking to scale successfully. Some of the key reasons why it is so important include:
Strategy Execution
EPPM enables you to link projects directly to strategic business goals. By optimizing and prioritizing the portfolio, you ensure resources are allocated to the work that will drive strategy execution. This results in better realization of business objectives.
Resource Optimization
With a bird’s eye view into all organizational projects, you can optimize resource utilization enterprise-wide. This eliminates redundancies and waste as people and budgets are maximized for business impact.
Risk Management
EPPM provides enhanced predictability and control over the portfolio. You can proactively identify and mitigate risks that could impact strategic projects thereby minimizing surprises and disruptions.
Standardization
EPPM introduces standardized project ideation, selection, approval, and governance processes which improves efficiency and brings consistency across business units.
Continuous Improvement
Centralized lessons learned and performance data enables continuous process improvements over time. You can systematically eliminate waste and optimize project delivery.
Benefits Of Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
Enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) offers many benefits that enable organizations to work smarter. Its key advantages include:
Enhanced Visibility
With EPPM, you gain complete visibility into all projects and portfolios enterprise-wide. This enables better decision-making for resource and budget allocation.
Improved Strategic Alignment
The ability to clearly map projects and portfolios to business objectives ensures alignment. This way you can easily see which efforts drive strategy and which don’t.
Better Predictability
Centralized data and standardized processes improve predictability over costs, timelines, risks, and outcomes giving you the insights needed for proactive management.
Increased Efficiency
By eliminating redundant efforts and optimizing resource utilization, you increase efficiency across project delivery.
Effective Governance
The data and insights from EPPM systems allow for governance based on hard metrics rather than opinions to enable objective decision-making.
Higher Return On Invest (ROI)
All of the above benefits combined result in higher ROI from projects as you end up with a portfolio focused on driving maximum business value.
Challenges of Enterprise Project Portfolio Management
While enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) offers many benefits, it also comes with some implementation challenges. Here are some of these challenges:
Change Management
Moving to an EPPM system represents a significant change for many organizations and adoption may be slow if stakeholders are not bought into the processes. Proactive change management is key to surmounting this challenge.
Tool Selection
Choosing the right EPPM software can be difficult given the many complex options. You must take time to understand your needs and assess tools accordingly.
Data Integration
EPPM requires data aggregated across systems and business units for centralized EPPM reporting and insights. This data integration can be technically challenging.
Skill Gaps
An enterprise project management office needs people with specialized skills such as data analysis, portfolio optimization, and financial management. To mitigate this, you should assess your organization and fill any skill gaps.
Ongoing Governance
The governance processes require discipline and commitment from leadership. It’s easy to abandon if not managed well, so plan for ongoing governance.
Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Software and Tools
As earlier highlighted, there are a variety of software tools available to enable enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM). Some leading options include:
Planview Enterprise One
Planview offers end-to-end EPPM functionality for strategy and portfolio optimization. Its capabilities include advanced analytics, scenario modeling, resource management, and financial governance. It integrates with major ERPs.
CA Project and Portfolio Management (PPM)
CA PPM provides portfolio visualization, demand management, and resource allocation planning. Its role-based dashboards provide insights, and it integrates with CA Agile Central for Agile project support.
Oracle Fusion Cloud Project Portfolio Management
Oracle’s cloud-based EPPM enables modeling, forecasting, and “what-if” analysis for the portfolio while its financial tools track costs and revenue. One of its selling points is its strong reporting and analytics.
Microsoft Project Online
This is a SaaS option from Microsoft for centralized project portfolio management that enables resource engagements across multiple projects and interactive dashboards.
Planisware
Planisware is designed for large project portfolio optimization. It includes simulation, forecasting, and custom models for optimization, as well as integration with Power BI for reporting.
Sciforma
Sciforma PS Next focuses on both project and product portfolio management. It has modules for demand/idea management, workflow approvals, and resource planning.
How to Choose the Right Enterprise Project Portfolio Management Software and Tools
Choosing the right enterprise project portfolio management (EPPM) software for optimizing and governing your project portfolio is important. However this can be dicey with a ton of options out there.
When evaluating EPPM solutions, key capabilities to look for include:
Centralized Project Repository
A centralized database to maintain details on all organizational projects and resources. This provides complete visibility across the portfolio.
Workflow Automation
Tools to streamline and automate processes for project ideation, submission, reviews, approvals, and oversight as this improves efficiency.
Resource Management
The functionality to map project resource needs and allocate them optimally based on availability and skill sets to prevent over or under-allocation.
Portfolio Analytics
Robust analytics and visualizations that provide insights into portfolio health, risks, and opportunities enabling data-driven decisions.
Financial Management
Track budgets versus actual costs by project. Estimate costs and forecast accordingly to ensure effective financial governance.
Demand Management
Manage incoming project requests, ideas, and change orders through structured intake and reviews.
Reporting and Dashboards
Role-based reporting and executive dashboards that showcase portfolio status and KPIs to provide visibility for governance.
Integration Capabilities
APIs and connectors to integrate with other systems like PPM, ERP, HR, accounting, and more to enable a single source of truth.
Conclusion
As explained in this post, enterprise project portfolio management brings immense strategic value in enabling organizations to scale efficiently.
By providing complete visibility into the project landscape, driving alignment with business goals, optimizing resources, and governing the portfolio centrally, EPPM helps organizations maximize ROI from projects.
While adopting EPPM poses some challenges, the long-term benefits make it a worthwhile investment.
With the right executive buy-in, change management, and enabling software, you can position your organization for continued success.
