Community Forum – Managing Tech Project Portfolios

Resource Type
Survey (Community Forum)
Author
Innovation Research Interchange
Topic
Portfolio Management
Associated Event
Publication

Do you have a Formal System to Manage Tech Project Portfolio?

Abraham Tijerina, Metalsa SA de CV
We are considering developing/implementing a system to manage our technology project portfolio. We have done some preliminary research on the web already but have found many alternatives available. I would like to learn from your own experiences about how you keep good track of your project portfolio and if you use any commercial or in-house developed application for this purpose.

Community Responses

Tom Kavassalis, VP, Strategy and Alliances, Xerox Innovation Group
We have an approach for managing our technology portfolio that we have been using for the past six years.  Our approach was developed in-house after studying many of the contemporary frameworks for portfolio management and value creation.  It does not rely heavily on any commercial tools as we found most tools to offer a particular and often narrow perspective.  However, some commercial tools can be helpful as you will see below.

Our approach has three components:

  1. Strategic Views:  This is a series of views that we create from our portfolio.  Its shows us our projects and investments along several dimensions.  Important dimensions to look at are Technology Newness and Market Newness.  Another on is Project Maturity  (from exploratory at one end and transfer/commercialization at the other end).  There are more that we use but they are specific to internal governance and funding models.
  2. Project Scorecards:  Each project in the portfolio completes a qualitative scorecard.  The score card asks questions that attempt to capture the assumptions we are making about our ability to create value and capture value with the project.  The questionnaire has been crafted to cover projects at almost any stage of development.  A key output from this exercise is charts that depict Value Creation and Value Capture (essentially risk) potential of the portfolio.  The real value of this exercise is having the structured conversations about the assumptions.  It’s a great tool for looking at outliers in the portfolio and for testing that we have a solid investment thesis – e.g. more investment to higher value projects.  Scorecards are a good precursor to developing a more detailed business case.
  3. Specific Project Valuations:  For a relatively small number of projects we perform more detailed business modeling and analysis – ranging from simple NPV analysis for well understood opportunities to options analysis for projects with more uncertainty.  Here, commercial tools are routinely used.

Jay Otten, Manager: NA IP, R&D Controlling, Technology & Innovation, BASF
Our business uses HYPE software to track our ideas and smaller projects, but major project (e.g. >~ 1 million $) are tracked in PHASE-GATE software. 
 

Joseph M. Lehman, Manager – Innovation Technology, Carpenter Technology Corporation
I would recommend that you consider using Microsoft Project with MS Project Server.  In the 2010 version, the software successfully integrates Project Management and Portfolio Management.  The software can be customized to collect various data to drive the portfolio optimizer via formal workflows if necessary (SharePoint), but for the most part, everything you need is built right in. 

Since our technology portfolio interacts with many disciplines and stakeholders, we utilize the enterprise-wide resource and planning features which is the backbone of MS Project Server.  The portfolio drivers are customizable, so your specific weightings (ROI, strategic fit, etc.) and rankings by project can be defined easily.  This facilitates scenario analysis and other more sophisticated portfolio assessments.  Finally, you should be using a disciplined PM approach anyway, so if you are using MS Project, the hurdle to Project server is small with a great deal of benefit.

Manager, Large consumer products company
In our corporate research organization, we use a stage-gate process called ETD (Early Technology Development). It is our technology development pipeline which takes raw ideas and provides a process in which they can be explored and improved upon. ETD is a way to manage technology programs through various stages of development and associated risk. It allows researchers to pursue ideas with less definition than in our product development stage-gate process and focuses their efforts on technology development. The entire ETD process is managed through Microsoft SharePoint and K2 workflow software. This process provides a portal for hundreds of ideas to be entered, tracked and advanced with minimal project management burden/overhead compared to what is required when a project enters the business project portfolio. We have had the ETD process in operation for approximately five years and it has generated several technologies which have proven valuable in meeting the needs of our consumers and customers.  

Marty Cohen, Director of Commercial Technology, Michelman Inc.
We use an in-house developed project portfolio system.  By project, we record, discuss, and document:

  • The project justification information and driver(s)
  • The project requirements
  • The project plans
  • The customer/market verification of targets
  • Prioritization
  • Developments and project updates
  • Customer/market evaluations of experimental materials
  • Product acceptance
  • Product scale-up
  • Customer/market feedback
  • Product modifications
  • Commercialization
  • Project learnings
  • Implementation systems

The system is globally accessible through a web-based server.

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