An effective project portfolio management system requires effective project selection and project execution methodologies, and support tools.  PD-Trak offers an extensive range of tools to help you manage your project portfolio.  Key objectives of project portfolio management are as follows:

• To maximize the value of the portfolio
• To achieve balance
• To align projects with company strategy

Click here for a detailed description of the portfolio management process (as applied in a product development environment - similar processes can be applied to other project types).

PD-Trak provides tools aimed at a) developing a future project portfolio plan and b) executing the plan and monitoring progress / performance.

Some functions are available as purchased options as indicated below.  Click here to view option pricing.

Portfolio Monitoring Functions

These items included in base PD-Trak system The Master Project Schedule (MPS) is the primary management report that provides flexible reporting options that summarize the projects in the portfolio. The Project Timeline report gives a high level view of the relative timing of selected projects in the portfolio.   The Consolidated Project Dashboard report extracts a copy of the Metrics Dashboard worksheet from each project and adds it into a saveable workbook.  This can be used as a status reporting mechanism. (Requires Extended Project Toolkit option)   These items included with Portfolio Management Reports option The Portfolio Bubble Chart and Pie Chart reports show the mix and balance of selected projects in graphical format using parameters that can be set by the user.   The Existing Product Revenue worksheet allows future revenue and profit expected from existing products to be captured and included in the Financial Roll Up report.   The Financial Roll Up report shows a roll up of the cash flow of the projects in the portfolio. These items included with Resource Management option The Resource Pool captures the resource skill types and names for the organization including cost to deploy, headcount and project availability factor.  The Resource Analysis function allows a resource demand to be compared to resource availability for a selected group of projects.

Portfolio and Resource Planning

These tools are designed to help you develop the strongest possible plan for the future.  If you were developing the list of target projects for next year, your business planning process would have defined your strategic objectives and your constraints in terms of available funds and resources for project execution.  The next step is project selection which involves the following:

1.  Selecting the best ideas for next years projects (see Idea Management page for related tools)
2. Setting up preliminary Project Files to scope out the ideas as potential projects (preliminary estimates of timing, expense, payback and risk)
3. Adding these potential projects to the existing project portfolio (projects that will continue into next year).
4. Prioritizing the projects in this portfolio to maximize value, achieve balance and to align with company strategy.
5. Determining how many projects can be executed given resource capacity / constraints.

The portfolio and resource planning tools are designed to support steps 3-5 in this process.