How has the economic downturn affected your company's bottom line? A common theme you're probably hearing is that organizations want to improve efficiency, cut costs, and maintain core functions, allowing them to survive and be ready to bounce back as soon as times get better. Unfortunately, cost cutting efforts usually translate into project work being canned, which means many companies reduce their project management practice and staff accordingly. That in turn can lead to poor return on investment in times when it's needed most or investing in the wrong projects or executing project work poorly.

Although it's no silver bullet, the practice of project portfolio management (PPM) can help organizations cut costs in an efficient manner. The goal is to make sure that resources are invested in initiatives that support the strategic objectives of the organization as they evolve. Companies that employ PPM as a practice stand out because they apply method to the sometimes-haphazard decision-making that goes on in determining what projects warrant investment.

There are quite a few technologies that can be used in support of PPM, ranging from complex enterprise applications to simple spreadsheet models. As part of its enterprise project management (EPM) solution, Microsoft’s offering is Project Portfolio Server, an enterprise software platform that allows organizations to manage their portfolio of projects in a client/server-based environment. The system supports portfolio lifecycle management, from idea generation, to portfolio prioritization and optimization, to execution tracking of selected projects and programs. Each of the three modules of the Project Portfolio Server software supports one major area of the portfolio management process.

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