The Emperor’s New Milestones is a blog dedicated to the ins and outs of managing project portfolios within companies.

At its heart, portfolio management is straightforward. Yet, in practice, it can evolve into insanely complex forms, complicating the lives of team members far more than necessary.

What is project portfolio management in your organization? Here are some wrong (and one right) answers:

• Is portfolio management merely and advanced form of project management? (it isn’t!)
• Is portfolio management a discipline to manage the financial aspect of project portfolio? (it isn’t!)
• Is portfolio management a standardized [status] reporting? (it isn’t! God, please, no! :)
• Is portfolio management at odds with agile methodologies? (no it isn’t!)
• Is portfolio management about cost control? (no it isn’t!)
• Is portfolio management only for large organizations? (no, it isn’t!)

Project portfolio management is, fundamentally, a method for prioritizing and overseeing a group of projects to ensure alignment with strategic objectives and to maximize overall value.

That’s it, that’s the whole idea. Portfolio management just ensures that what you’re doing corresponds to what you intend to achieve, and adds as much value as possible.

In this blog I’ll write about best practices and about “what really grinds my gears”. Enjoy!