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Foreword
Portfolio management is a discipline whose time has come. Recent reports from the UK government’s capability reviews, as well as from the National Audit Office, have highlighted the importance of improved prioritization of our investment in change. This is not a challenge facing the public sector alone – ensuring successful delivery and realizing the full benefits, in terms of realizing efficiency savings and contribution to strategic objectives, are of relevance across all sectors of the economy and in all jurisdictions.
It is here that portfolio management plays a critical role in facilitating organizational survival and growth – by better coordinating investment in programmes and projects, improving the management of risk, encouraging collaborative working and by providing accurate, timely information that enhances management decision-making, organizations are able to:
- Invest in the ‘right’ programmes and projects in the context of the current environmental conditions and the organization’s strategic objectives.
- Ensure successful delivery in terms of time, quality, budget and, most significantly, benefits realization.
This is particularly important in challenging economic conditions as portfolio management:
- Enables more informed cost cutting by providing a clearer view of priorities and the impact of cuts both in the short and longer term.
- Helps to ensure successful delivery of efficiency initiatives and realization of the required savings.
- Provides a means for greater efficiency in the delivery of change initiatives via improved resource planning, dependency management and streamlined procedures.
- Lays the basis for more informed resource allocation, improved delivery and greater benefits realization going forward.
This guide has been prepared to provide practitioners with the grounding to apply portfolio management within a wide variety of organizations. As such it encompasses consideration of the principles upon which effective portfolio management is based; the key practices, including examples of how they have been applied in real-life situations; and guidance on how to implement portfolio management and sustain progress. I commend it to you.
David Pitchford
Executive director
Major Projects Directorate
Cabinet Office
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