If we are talking about project management, effective portfolio management can decide the future of a business. Microsoft Project, a popular software, provides users with exceptional features that can manage portfolios very smoothly, encouraging organizations to achieve their strategic objectives.
Microsoft Project Overview
Microsoft Project is flexible enterprise-wide project management software, or a powerful tool perfectly crafted for portfolio management. It is a cloud-based service offered through Office 365; however, there are various editions available. With the help of Microsoft Project, you can easily plan and collaborate on projects, allowing access from anywhere in the world and involving project decision-makers, managers, and teams. You can also create schedules, manage resources, complete day-to-day tasks, and keep track of time with this tool. It is a strategic and modernized approach to organizing and controlling multiple projects with regard to various business objectives.
Portfolio Management Overview
Portfolio management is the centralized management of a collection of projects to achieve business goals or strategic objectives. It involves managing the risks, resources, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of multiple investments in order to optimize the return on investment. The main goals of a portfolio manager are to maximize value, balance, maintain a strategic direction, and work on the right number of projects.
Key Features
- Prioritizing and selecting projects
Microsoft Project aligns project portfolios based on their business strategy. This tool encourages businesses to rank projects based on a range of different criteria, such as future business goals, ROI, and resource availability. Portfolio team members decide which projects will start first; they also decide when to start them. Some projects, being less critical, lay the foundation for future endeavors.
- Governance
The main reason for using portfolio management techniques is to enhance decision-making power and oversight—simply, to put great governance in one area. This governance feature allows control over the projects. It provides frameworks that define roles, responsibilities, and workflows, thus breaking down and assigning duties. The centralized dashboards and reporting tools let users see and track portfolio performance, track key metrics, and manage strategic goals side by side. This enhances collaboration and communication between members, eliminating risks concerning portfolio investments. You can easily monitor the delivery of the work inside the portfolio.
- Manage and monitor the portfolio
This feature may sound like an obvious thing to write, but someone has to be responsible for the whole process involving the life cycle, review process, approvals, funding requests, paperwork, and, of course, people. The project manager only has to worry about managing a specific project, whereas a portfolio manager will be witnessing the execution progress and the alignment of all projects across the portfolio. The key element of project portfolio management is to keep the portfolio focused on meeting existing business goals.
Implementation of Microsoft Project online portfolio management
- Setup and configuration
The first step is to set up the portfolio by stating the specific goals, boundaries, and expected outcomes for all projects concerning the portfolio. You need to categorize all your projects and then focus on customizing their attributes, which involves prioritizing each project according to its needs and deciding which project will start first and which will last. After which, you can focus on the key performance indicators (KPIs) of each project in order to make portfolio analysis and decision-making more efficient. In order to prioritize projects in the best way, you can use a decision matrix by assigning criteria to each project.
The criteria can vary, such as the alignment of the goals, the expected rate of financial return, and the risks involved. This can be highly beneficial in order to compare and rank projects effectively. In order to set up a new project portfolio in Microsoft Project, create a new file, naming it the master project. Then go to the “Project” tab, select Subproject, and select all the project files that you want in your portfolio. You can insert them by simply clicking “insert.” Make sure the link to the project is enabled so you get connected to the original project files, resulting in the master and subprojects being perfectly synchronized with one another.
- Manage resources
The next step is to manage resources. This can be done by creating a shared resource pool for all projects that involve a portfolio. Start by clicking “resource sheet” from the view tab and adding all the details of the resources that are shared, such as their names and types. And maximum availability of the projects. Then just save this file, as this will be your resource pool.
After this, open all project files that are utilizing the shared resources. Go to the “Resource” tab, click “Resource Pool,” and click “Share Resources.” Choose “Use Resources” from the subproject and select the resource pool file that you created before. You will need to then choose between two options: pool takes precedence or sharer takes precedence. Project managers can efficiently allocate resources such as personnel, equipment, and materials, promoting optimal utilization.
- Progress tracking and reporting
Microsoft Project customizes dashboards and reports that can indicate KPIs in order to track the progress of the projects.
- Collaboration and communication
There is a centralized platform in Microsoft Project that lets team members collaborate and share important documents, updates, and project outcomes.
- Risk management
MS Project has a risk assessment feature that can help identify potential risks and create plans to minimize their impact on the outcome.
Benefits of using Microsoft Project for portfolio management
Businesses that use Microsoft Project for portfolio management enjoy many benefits because of the perfectly designed Microsoft portfolio management tools. Firstly, it enhances overall efficiency and productivity by organizing project planning, resource management, and communication between project managers. Microsoft Project has also improved accuracy by allocating the right resources with its top-notch scheduling algorithms, which have reduced the chances of any errors occurring.
This software has also improved decision-making power since it empowers managers with clear insights and data visualization tools that help them take the right action throughout the whole journey. It has also increased collaboration by promoting teamwork between managers with the help of collaboration and alignment with everyone involved in the project. The last, but not the last, benefit of Microsoft Project would be adaptability; no doubt it offers scalability and flexibility for organizations, whether it is a small-scale project or a big one.
