The Characteristics Of Portfolio Management

As defined in the PMBOK, a project is “a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result”. Because it is temporary, it has a definite beginning and end, which will happen once, the objective, is reached or the project is terminated, no matter the reason. The outcome of the project will either be tangible or not. And in order to achieve it, a series of activities and tasks will be performed thanks to diverse resources allocated and within a set of specifications. Hence, the main characteristics are:

- Established objective

- Defined life span

- Several stakeholders involved, usually from diverse departments

- Doing something that has never been done before

- Specific requirements, especially time, cost and scope/quality

Most of the time, it requires numerous stakeholders involved at different level of the hierarchy. Indeed, strategic plans are conceived by a group of managers, selected by another and projects to achieve the objective, implemented by once again another group. Thus, a good project alignment with the strategy is essential to counterbalance the multiplicity of stakeholders, and to get a common goal without wasting any resource. To do that, projects must be properly selected and in coherence with the project portfolio.

Portfolio management is driven by the strategies of the organization; it can be achieved with the proper selection of programs and projects to be implemented, prioritization and adequate provision of resources. It is useful to align internal business resources with external requirements of the changing environment. Portfolio contributes with:

- Overlooking the projects selection in line with the organization strategy

- The creation of best practices and their application

- Prioritizing the projects and giving the appropriate level of

In the context of growing importance to this matter, many projects are implemented to sustain it in the IT department of Total Marketing & Services. Following on this logic, the project that I will use as an example to support my research on the key success factors will be an organizational project that was carried out by the project department of Template applications.

“Primavera” is a carve-out project with a budget of more than 3 million Euros and an impact on 1500 users. Total Marketing & Services is the headquarters of 220 subsidiaries spread around the world. Nevertheless, for historical reasons this model was not applied in France, where commercial and holding activities were held under the same entity. Hence, the project consists in the divestiture of the commercial activities from the holding to create the French subsidiary Total Marketing France. This scheme allows the company to apply the same model that they currently have with all their other subsidiaries whilst retaining management control. Moreover, as Total Marketing Services will no longer have commercial activities, the company will benefit fiscally from the project (linked to the company social solidarity