Anand Sanwal poses an interesting question on his blog, investiledysfunction:
why are project managers running portfolio management efforts within their organizations if it is a different skillset altogether
This is a question that should be considered when defining career paths for project managers. Project managers are often execution focused and not cut out for the more strategic work of defining and optimizing portfolios. Anand describes this later in his post:
Picking the right projects as part of a portfolio is a strategic, financial and risk discipline and very different than the skills possessed by project managers. If you are in the handful of project managers who can do it all, please don’t write to tell me this. You are awesome and a rare gem. I’m talking about the average project manager who doesn’t have the project management + strategy, finance, risk, etc skills.
I agree completely. Portfolios are often defined based on the scope of an executive’s area of accountability within a company. These executives need portfolio managers to assist them in determining what the organization should be doing while a project manager is more focused on how they should be doing it. In other words, portfolio management is a business-focused leadership function and project management is a project-focused management function. I agree with Anand that the majority of project managers do not have the business strategy and planning experience to perform this function well.
