مدیریت پرتفولیو پروژه معاصر : بازتاب در توسعه استاندارد صلاحیت استرالیا برای مدیریت پرتفولیو پروژه

Project portfolio management is an emerging aspect of business management that focuses on how projects are selected, prioritised, integrated, managed and controlled in the multi-project context that exists in modern organisations. Competency standards have been developed by professional bodies for project managers. However, to date there has been no attempt to develop a competency standard at the portfolio management level. This paper examines the process for development of the first performance-based competency standard for project portfolio management and identifies how this contributes to the body of knowledge in both project portfolio management and project management more broadly. The intent is to use the Standard to improve project portfolio management capability and practice in organisations, which in turn promotes efficient resource use and more profitable project outcomes. Specific issues regarding Australian practice are described, along with implications for how this may impact Australian practice in the future.

This paper examines the process for development of the Australian Competency Standard for Project Portfolio Management and identifies how this Standard contributes to the project portfolio management (PPM) body of knowledge, to professional and industry practice as well as providing a bridge to further academic research, extending the recommendations of the Rethinking Project Management agenda (Winter, 2006). The Standard provides a framework for practice and makes an important contribution to theory, by providing a summation of the current PPM discourse and its application in practice in a competency context. This allows existing project portfolio management theory and practice to be drawn together, allowing practice to inform theory and theory to inform practice. The linking of theory and practice through a normative framework provides an opportunity for future research, in particular, a longitudinal study of the success of specific project portfolio management tools and techniques over time for example. This linkage also provides a common benchmark for qualitative analysis and performance measurement. As such, the Standard plays an important role in defining the performance specifications of individuals who undertake the role of project portfolio manager in organisations in both private and public organisations across a range of industry sectors and types.

It is clear that industry have not mastered the art of effective PPM. A challenge for organisations is managing this potentially diverse range of projects, while ensuring that the right projects are selected. This paper makes a number of contributions to the literature on project portfolio management. Firstly, it demonstrates the fact that the literature suffers from a number of conceptual issues, including a lack of cumulative tradition, clarity, theoretical glue, parsimony and applicability. Secondly, the framework developed in this study is a first attempt to define the functional performance criteria for the function of project portfolio management. Thirdly, it also forms the basis for future academic research and provides a valuable industry reference point upon which more industry-relevant research can be built. The intent is to use the Standard to improve project portfolio management capability in organisations, which in turn promotes efficient resource use and more profitable project outcomes. It also provides a basis for further research to determine its applicability across a range of organisational cultures and decision-making approaches, and in particular organisations with differing levels of project management, program management or implementation maturities. Whilst it is acknowledged that the Standard needs to be tested in a range of organisations and situations, this seminal work will also inform standards work in the portfolio management domain underway in both the UK and US, and will provide a starting point for further refinement by both the practitioner and academic communities engaged in both research and praxis. In time, the standard can also be used as the basis for developing an Australian vocational qualification in project portfolio management.