Thank you for participating in and commenting on our Nov. 18 webinar that dealt with project and portfolio financials. I’d like to use this note to respond to two key comments that came up in our survey following the event: the wish to see a presentation of tools, and the wish to see more details. My response to both comments is similar: in this webinar I tried to concentrate more on the principles behind project and portfolio financials rather then the method for collecting and tracking the financial information.
Since this webinar was the first one on the subject of financials I wanted to use it to convey the main ideas. My experience has shown that many managers may understand the connection between portfolio selection and the organization’s strategy, namely that the strategy defines the organization’s directions and leads to prioritization of portfolio projects, however it is not always clear that a portfolio’s financials must be aligned with corporate financials. This alignment defines the organization’s constraints and leads to the optimization of the portfolio.
Even if the project manager does understand how important it is for portfolio financials to mirror the organization’s financials as much as possible, the challenge is to structure each project financials to support the portfolio financials in which it participates.
Per your comments, future webinars will introduce both tools and more details that relate to the project and portfolio financials and will present ideas for planning, tracking, and decision-making based on them. And again, your input is important and greatly appreciated to help make these webinar sessions better and more effective in the future.
