Evaluation of Project Portfolio Management Performance: Long and Short Term Perspective

Abstract

The complexity of project portfolio management /PPM/ is widely recognized in the specialized literature as well as its multidimensional link to the measurement of its success. In light of the variety of portfolio administration issues thoroughly studied, there is not any comprehensive model developed for the evaluation of PPM performance. Here we agree on the basic proposition that PPM success should not be evaluated by any simple consolidated result derived as a sum of the individual performance of each project. The paper presents selected results from a study of PPM success in 184 Bulgarian project-oriented organizations where several indicators have been experimentally measured. It provides insights on the measurement of project portfolio management success in both short and long-term perspective. The long-term perspective is captured by two dimensions of the strategic alignment-the first one relates to the achievement of strategic goals of the organization through selection and realization of projects. The second one is focused on the strategic resource allocation. Short-term perspective is measured by the level of projects' success accounting for three dimensions-meeting the project's budget, schedule, and quality of delivery. These dimensions reflect the efficiency of organizational resources utilization which can be achieved through high degree of coordination of project planning, execution, monitoring and control within an operational system of project portfolio management. Here we assume that successful governance should lead to a better alignment of projects in the portfolio with the organizational strategy. Initial findings about these dimensions of PPM success are reported and discussed in the paper.