Management of Portfolios (MoP) Practitioner Guide Released

It's been quite a long wait for the UK Government's Office of Government and Commerce (OGC) to release their practitioner guide for the management of portfolios, creatively called Management of Portfolios (MoP).  But it has finally happened!!  For a while now, programme managers and executives have known about the concept of several programmes being rolled up to an overall portfolio. However there hasn't been much in the way of formal guidance on managing that till now. Previously managers of portfolios have had to rely on conventional management theory and governance frameworks.  OGC's maturity model P3M3 has been of some assistance in managing portfolios with guidance for increasing portfolio management tutorial.  Nothing can beat a proper methodology however. 

I haven't acquired a copy of the guidance as yet.  So I can only comment on the content based on the marketing material. Portfolio management sits above project and programme management, however an efficient and mature practice of either or both is not required.  Merely by applying MoP, the organisation will start to invest in programmes and projects that are aligned to the organisation's long term objectives. More than any other of the P3 disciplines portfolio management requires strong executive support.  Executive have to understand the benefits of choosing the right programmes and projects.  Benefit management to ensure that benefits are aligned with the corporate strategy and harvestable is also a crucial area.  As is an understanding of risk mitigation and other risk management practices.

The concept of a portfolio is readily applicable to the public sector where the collection of streams are known as a portfolio.  Each government department then manages one or more portfolios as part of their remit.  I wrote last year of my department gaining another portfolio – the National Health and Hospitals Network.

To find out more about MoP refer to the new Best Management Practices website: http://www.best-management-practice.com/Portfolio-Management-MoP/