While most project-driven organizations nowadays implement some level of Opportunity and Risk management process, portfolio-level processes are often non existent. We find that it is a striking issue that greatly impedes Opportunity and Risk management processes to reach an acceptable effectiveness.

Portfolio-level processes are extremely important when it comes to the overall performance of the organization, in particular because the organization shares resources across projects. Much more structured portfolio-level Opportunities and Risk management processes should be implemented. Our new White Paper 2015-02 ‘Why Portfolio Level Opportunities and Risks Management is So Essential in Project-driven organizations’ describes what are the issues that need to be covered, and in general how to implement such process.

At portfolio level, in principle, except in the case of rare catastrophic risks, the Opportunities and Risks of different Projects should tend to average out. This is the way most businesses manage their risks. However there are some instances where it is not the case – in particular, because the averaging out supposes that the Projects in the portfolio are independent. All possible dependencies, which are in effect managed by the organisation, are sources of Opportunities and Risks for the organization.

Portfolio-level Opportunity and Risk management processes are essential for the sustainability of any project-driven organization. Structured processes are rarely implemented and portfolio-level decision-making such as resource allocation between projects and the decision to take or not a new project as part of the portfolio are often left to the feel of the senior executives.
We believe that a much more structured approach can to be implemented, adding a lot of value to the organization, in particular with regard to common resources and to the monitoring of the diversification of projects. Our new White Paper 2015-02 ‘Why Portfolio Level Opportunities and Risks Management is So Essential in Project-driven organizations’ gives principles which, if they are followed, will greatly improve the resilience of organizations.