Product Description

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) goes beyond the typical project management approach to offer a set of proven business practices that can help executives, program managers, and project managers bring projects into alignment with the strategies, resources, and executive oversight of the overall enterprise.  Step by step, this book shows how to take a project from the inception of a vision to the realization of benefits to the organization. Project Portfolio Management draws on project management expert Harvey A. Levine’s years of research and distills the knowledge and best practices from dozens of leaders in the field to show how to select and implement the projects that will garner the best results. Throughout this important resource, Levine tackles the many challenges associated with PPM, including

• Ranking value and benefits
• Determining the size of the portfolio pipeline
• Assessing the impact of uncertainty on projects and portfolios
• Understanding the benefit and risk relationship
• Establishing a portfolio governance capability
• Managing the portfolio to maximize benefits
• Implementing PPM

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #243553 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 560 pages

Review
“…a valuable reference for theory and analysis…” (Supply Management, December 2005)

From the Back Cover
Project Portfolio Management

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) goes beyond the typical project management approach to offer a set of proven business practices that can help executives, program managers, and project managers bring projects into alignment with the strategies, resources, and executive oversight of the overall enterprise.

Step by step, this book shows how to take a project from the inception of a vision to the realization of benefits to the organization. Project Portfolio Management draws on project management expert Harvey A. Levine's years of research and distills the knowledge and best practices from dozens of leaders in the field to show how to select and implement the projects that will garner the best results. Throughout this important resource, Levine tackles the many challenges associated with PPM, including

• Ranking value and benefits
• Determining the size of the portfolio pipeline
• Assessing the impact of uncertainty on projects and portfolios
• Understanding the benefit and risk relationship
• Establishing a portfolio governance capability
• Managing the portfolio to maximize benefits
• Implementing PPM

Using Project Portfolio Management as a guide, project managers can create a healthy portfolio of projects that will ultimately improve an organization's effectiveness in using limited resources to support its goals.

About the Author
Harvey A. Levine has been a project management specialist and consultant since 1962. In addition to contributing to PM journals and web sites, Levine provides applications, system design, and consulting services in project planning and control. He served as president and chairman of the board of directors of the Project Management Institute and is a PMI fellow. He is the author of Practical Project Management from John Wiley & Sons.

Customer Reviews

A very easy read to introduce and guide people into the world of PPM
After having evaluated many recent books on the subject of Project Portfolio Management, I found the practical guidance and descriptive clarity as provided by Harvey A. Levine exceptional. Working for Serena Software, I was looking for a single book that could educate and guide a variety of people into PPM, ranging from new Mariner account managers, engineers as well as Mariner customers. Not only does this book provide an easy way to understand the typical Project Portfolio Management process, it is being done using such simple terms, avoiding buzzwords and unnecessary jargon, making it very easy and fast to read, even for a non native English speaking audience. The latter is important if you are operating worldwide. The book does contain some level of repetition, especially in Part Two, but as these are contributing sections and case studies, written by different authors who provide a different angle or viewpoint to the same concepts, I found those especially useful for practitioners (our engineers and customers). The downside of having multiple authors is however that Levine's simple and clear writing style is not always maintained. The advantage of this approach is that within the same book, readers will benefit from learning some related topics such as ways to measure (e.g. earned value, AHP, NPV), Enterprise Project Management, IT Governance, and much more.

As a result, the company has bought over 50 copies to date and I have been recommending this book to our new employees, partners, and customers worldwide who want to build up their knowledge and implementation skills in Project Portfolio Management.

Eddy Pauwels
Serena Software
Antwerp, Belgium

Overall, very well done
I have been waiting for a good, practical portfolio management book and this one hits the mark for me. It contains a good mix of content including some "theory" as well as a good bit of practical advice. The writing style is clear, to the point, and provides you with enough to go off and make something happen in your organization.

As an aside, I think the graphic on the cover is right on point. We are too often burning the candle at both ends in the project/program/portfolio management space!

Great Book
This is a great book for someone trying to implement portfolio management in a company. Excellent insight.