Multi-criteria Decision-making Methods for Project Portfolio Management: A Literature Review

Abstract

Project portfolio management (PPM) has become a key element of large organisations' service delivery due to the close attention inherently paid to numerous issues in the discipline of project management. Its success is closely associated with the degree of understanding of its issues and the quality of decisions made at the portfolio level which can be addressed using multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) methods. Although several of these MCDM methods have been introduced to support decision-making functions as part of PPM, there has been little assessment of their performances, particularly when combining some of them. This paper identifies the key challenges of PPM, proposes a new framework for classifying PPM MCDM related methods and presents a literature review of applications of MCDM methods to PPM. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Danesh, D., Ryan, M.J. and Abbasi, A. (2018) 'Multi-criteria decision-making methods for project portfolio management: a literature review', Int. Biographical notes: Darius Danesh is a registered project director and a chartered professional engineer with over 17 years of postgraduate experience in a variety of executive engineering and management roles in government and private sectors. He holds a Bachelor and Masters degree in Engineering Science from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), and a Diploma and an Advanced Diploma in Project Management. He has also gained other qualifications in systems engineering, complex procurement and contract management, and international contract law. He has led many complex projects ranging from organisational performance improvement, logistics and operational management to major infrastructure and construction projects. Michael J. Ryan is the Director of the Capability Systems Centre, UNSW. He holds a Bachelor, Master's, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Electrical Engineering as well as a Graduate Diploma in Management Studies. He held a number of communications engineering, systems engineering, project management, and management positions. He is the Conference Chair of two international conferences, he is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Battlefield 76 D. Danesh et al. written one book, three books chapters and over 45 technical journal and conference papers. His research interest covers a wide range of topics in management science, organisation and network science and information systems management.