Other Typical Criteria

The specific weighting criteria used to manage a corporate project portfolio are dependent on the actual business/company and, generally, determined by executive management. A few of the more common criteria are strategic fit, ROI, and risk (among others), and they are largely addressed similarly in the agile or classic environment. As your portfolio management process matures, these criteria will become more detailed and business specific. The key points to consider are these: First, evaluating a project is different from evaluating a portfolio. For instance, you may not be able to justify an individual project alone, but it is more than justified when viewed as part of a portfolio of projects with a common, higher-level objective. Second, the nature of the agile environment (high uncertainty with multiple pathways) makes the strategies and objectives more likely to require multiple, small projects rather than a single, large one (see Figure 11-15). This, in turn, makes agile projects more conducive to the use of a portfolio management approach instead of treating each individual project separately when evaluating the project's value to the business.

Figure 11-15: Approach to achieving high-level objectives through tactical projects in an agile versus classic environment.

Successfully managing individual projects is only the start of a truly agile project-driven organization. Creating an agile portfolio management process will help ensure that the business is working on the right projects to attain its high-level objectives and business strategy. Integrating your portfolio management process with your project management processes will, in turn, provide the necessary, real-time linkages between the strategy and project levels of the business to keep them in alignment as business and project conditions change.