Why Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Matters

January 11, 2023

Your company is growing, and its portfolio of projects is expanding. How do you make sure that each project gets the resources it needs to be successful? By implementing a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool.

A PPM tool enables you to see the big picture of all your ongoing and proposed projects, assess their relative importance, and allocate resources accordingly. In other words, it helps you invest in the right initiatives and ensures that everyone is working on what’s most important.

If you’re not already using a PPM system, now is the time to learn more about how this powerful tool can help your organization achieve its goals – especially if you use a PPM tool that can integrate with your IT Service Management software.

Defining Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

PPM is a comprehensive approach to managing both ongoing and future project initiatives within an organization. It entails the identification, selection, implementation and communication of the most relevant projects within that organization in order to attain strategic objectives.

PPM helps plan and optimize resource distribution by assessing potential risk, return on investment and scheduling adherence to ensure appropriate capital investments are made. It also acts as an accountability tool for company-wide oversight of all related initiatives, enabling stakeholders to make informed decisions with greater efficiency and effectiveness.

Ultimately, successful PPM enables organizations to maximize their investment by achieving tangible results through strategic planning and portfolio optimization.

Kern Family Health Care, a Medi-Cal managed care health plan serving residents of Kern County, California, uses TeamDynamix PPM to manage all projects within the organization.

With a simple and intuitive user interface, TeamDynamix makes it easy for project managers to evaluate project requests, approve and prioritize initiatives, assign resources and track and report on progress. TeamDynamix helps EPMO staff keep projects on course, establish clear expectations, and allocate resources more effectively.

“With TeamDynamix, I always have a source of truth on project data,” LaVonne Banks, director of Kern Health Systems’ enterprise project management office (EPMO), said.

Why PPM is Important for Businesses

Project Portfolio Management is an important aspect of any business, enabling strategic control over all programs and projects. The purpose of PPM is to assess a project’s goals and objectives in order to maximize the value that it brings to the company.

By managing resources, budgets and timelines effectively, PPM can help businesses prioritize their most crucial tasks and allocate resources or focus on the areas where there is potential for further returns. It can also give leaders valuable insights into current projects as well as help plan for future ones.

Additionally, by achieving top performance on every project, it helps companies stay ahead of competitors. When implemented correctly PPM can be immensely valuable for maximizing success and profitability in any organization.

This is the case at Kern where TeamDynamix PPM has brought greater transparency to the project management process. It also saves Banks and her staff a great deal of time when they want to understand the status of projects and report this to organizational leaders.

“I love the platform’s reporting features,” she says. “They’re super easy to use. Being able to pull reports and quickly see real-time data is wonderful.”

Another key benefit of TeamDynamix is that it helps EPMO staff get out ahead of potential issues before they become full-blown problems. While some challenges are beyond the control of project managers, having greater insight makes it more likely that projects will be completed on time and under budget.

“We can quickly identify resource constraints and make adjustments when unexpected circumstances arise,” Banks says. “Because we can identify these issues earlier, we have a better chance of staying on top of resource management.”

Better transparency leads to more accountability and, ultimately, a higher success rate on projects.

How PPM Can Improve Efficiency and ROI

If you’re looking to increase project efficiency and ROI, PPM is essential.

By streamlining project processes from start to finish, you get better clarity, consistency and discipline to decision making. PPM helps reduce costs with improved visibility into operations, enabling strategies to be delivered in a cost-efficient manner.

Additionally, PPM offers organizations the opportunity to align activities with business goals and objectives. This is vital for success by helping leaders understand how projects are tracking against their timelines as well as budget limits while enabling them to allocate resources accordingly.

Overall, leveraging PPM tools can have a major impact on an organization’s bottom line through improving ROI while also enhancing operational efficiency. This is especially true when you can integrate your PPM with your ITSM tool.

The City of Sunnyvale, CA, uses TeamDyanmix for ITSM and PPM on a single platform – and it’s been extremely beneficial.

“With one platform now we can actually see the tickets that are being worked on as well as the projects that are in the pipeline,” Hema Nekkanti, project management office manager, said. “This gives us the ability to actually allocate the resources appropriately, and there’s no resource conflict.”

The Benefits of Implementing PPM

PPM is becoming increasingly popular for organizations looking for ways to improve how they handle multiple projects. The benefits of adopting this system are numerous as it enables businesses to easily allocate resources and track progress in order to ensure everything is running smoothly.

With PPM, organizations can standardize the way projects are managed, from documentation to strategy planning, providing a streamlined approach that reduces the waste of time and money while improving efficiency overall. This allows businesses to keep up with trends and better meet customer demands without compromising on quality.

In addition, PPM creates greater visibility into individual projects so that stakeholders can make informed decisions faster and with less risk. Ultimately, PPM is an invaluable asset in helping businesses continue to succeed despite the various challenges they face in today’s ever-changing market.

And when you have PPM and ITSM on a single platform you get the additional benefits of improved IT productivity, improved quality of service and improved IT performance measurement and reporting capabilities.

In addition, combining ITSM and PPM allows you to have all relevant information in one place. Instead of switching between different pages or programs, everything you need can be right in front of you in a comprehensive, custom dashboard. This allows for a great amount of information to be at your fingertips, like:

Amount of and type of work that needs to be completed
Estimated length of project or task
Which areas need more resources
Who is assigned to do what
Who has the availability to help fulfill certain needs
When that person can do the work

Having this list of information readily available to aid in decision-making speeds up a variety of processes. For example, someone would be able to quickly identify where a bottleneck is occurring, or where excess capacity exists within the resource pool.

Tips for Getting Started with PPM

When it comes to getting started with Project Portfolio Management, there are a few key tips to keep in mind.

First, establish your objectives and prioritize them in order of importance. By setting measurable goals and expectations at the outset, you’ll have better luck working towards achieving your project milestones.

Next, identify any potential roadblocks or risks that may arise. Understanding what could impact your timeline is essential for ensuring success.

Lastly, utilize the right tools and team support for driving your PPM implementation forward. Understanding how processes can effectively interact with existing systems will make it easier to successfully launch projects across the organization.

In conclusion, it is clear why Project Portfolio Management has become an essential tool for businesses. It streamlines the project assessment and approval process, improves ROI and efficiency and offers a number of distinct benefits over traditional methods.

With PPM, businesses can better manage their resources and coordinate their workloads across multiple projects. Working towards optimal performance will help ensure lasting success in this ever-evolving industry landscape.

Want to learn more about a single-platform approach to PPM and ITSM? Check out:

Why IT Service Management and Project Portfolio Management Belong Together

IT Service Management Vendor Rankings

Enterprise Integration Playbook:

TeamDynamix was recognized as an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the 2022 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for IT Service Management (ITSM)

TeamDynamix Partership Program

TeamDynamix Ranked 1st by Info Tech

Why Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Matters

Defining Project Portfolio Management (PPM)

Why PPM is Important for Businesses

How PPM Can Improve Efficiency and ROI

The Benefits of Implementing PPM

Tips for Getting Started with PPM

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