Projectized organizations group Projects into Business Units. Other ways to group projects, if needed, are Programs and Portfolios. Let’s review the definitions:
- A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result.
- A program is defined as a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.
- A portfolio refers to a collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped together to facilitate effective management of that work to meet strategic business objectives.
PMPeople implements the 3 management frameworks published by PMI® to help any practitioner Project Manager, Program Manager or Portfolio Manager.
A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge –a.k.a. PMBOK® Guide– identifies a framework of globally accepted tools and techniques for project management, providing a basis on which organizations can build methodologies, policies, procedures, rules and development life cycle approaches, all of them necessary for the project management practice. Sixth edition was released in 2017, based on the standard ANSI/PMI 99–001–2017 and including a guide to manage agile projects. PMI members can free download PDF version in 12 languages –English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Arabic, Hindi, Japanese and Korean.
The Standard for Program Management provides a guide on program managemen principles, including globally accepted definitions, success factors, knowledge areas, life cycle, practices and activities to lead programs to succeed. Fourth edition was released in 2017. PMI members can free download PDF version in English.
The Standard for Portfolio Management identifies many management principles and performance domain areas which are globally accepted as good practice in portfolio management. Organizations having many and complex investments, projects and programs to manage need portfolio management. Fourth edition was released in 2017. PMI members can free download PDF version in English.
First thing to start using PMPeople is organizing projects in Business Units, and also in Programs and Portfolios, if needed. Any new user can see how projects are organized, just entering free “PMPeople organization” to see 8 demo projects included in 3 business units, some of them belonging to 2 programs and 2 portfolios:
In PMPeople, projects may belong zero or one programs, and also to zero, one or several portfolios. At the same time, any progrem may be included in zero, one or many portfolios. Figure above shows some projects belonging to no program –projects 7 and 8– or just one program –project 1– and also belonging to no portfolio, just one porfolio or many of them –for instance, projects 1 and 2 are components of portfolios 1 and 2.
To get familiar with the tool practicing on how to organize projects, programs and portfolios, take this easy test: ORGANIZING PROJECTS
The following video explains some parts of the test:
