From the course: CompTIA Project+ (PK0-005) Cert Prep

Projects as part of a program and portfolio

From the course: CompTIA Project+ (PK0-005) Cert Prep

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Projects as part of a program and portfolio

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- How do multiple projects interweave together to make an overall big picture, but also how are multiple projects managed at the same time? Join Robin and I for a conversation. - [Announcer] You're watching ITProTV. (computer chimes) Thank you so much for joining us in this episode. I'm your host Lauren Deal, and with me is Robin Abernathy, and we're going to be talking to you all about, well, what is ahead or above project, right, because we talked about day-to-day activities, and we talked about project, and now we're going to talk about how, what is pulling them all together, right? - Yes, exactly, exactly. So what we want to talk about first here is the relationships between the different project management office components. Now we've already discussed a project, and a project produces a unique result. It has a definite start and end. Well, a project can be part of what we call a program. Now, the official definition of a program is a group of related project or activities that are managed in coordination to obtain benefits not available if they were managed individually. Now, what I like to do is I like to give a little bit of an example 'cause sometimes it's easier to understand if you can kind of see it in an example. Let's say an organization decides that they're going to do a renovation of several of their buildings. Now, that would require a lot of coordination because you may have, you could coordinate them individually. Each one of them, each building, could be a project. But then within each building, you're going to have some of the same things being done. Like plumbing is going to be done in all of those buildings. Wiring is going to be done in all those buildings. And you may have a finite number of resources to allocate, say, to the plumbing job or to the wiring job. So by managing them together as a program, you can make sure that all of those finite resources that you have are juggled in such a way that all of the projects within the program obtain the benefit of those resources when they need them. So maybe a building that is a little further ahead may get one of those resources a little later because they can afford a delay or something else. You're just making sure that that team of plumbers is not expected to be doing all three or four of those buildings at the same time. And that's what a program is all about. - So what I'm hearing, and this is helpful for me to kind of break down, is you could have kind of like a standardized system of, we're going to be doing multiple of these buildings. This is the type of plumbing in all of the buildings we need. And so trying to understand how it all works together, having a coordinated system, this makes total sense. - Yeah, and it's all managed from a central office. You may have a project manager who's over an individual project, but they also coordinate with that project management office as part of the program so that they get the dance just right because that's really what it is. It's more of a dance than anything. You've got to time it just right. - Wow, okay, so this is great to know. And now, beyond a program, it files kind of a little bit higher. - It goes a little bit higher, yes, and there is another component called a portfolio. Now, the definition for a portfolio, it includes all of the projects, programs, and the operations managed by an organization to allow it to reach its strategic objectives. The projects and programs included in the portfolio may or may not depend on each other. So what you'll have is you may have projects that fit within a program. Then you may have multiple programs that each have multiple projects. But then you may have this weird little project out here that doesn't fit in any of those programs, but it's still part of the portfolio. So the portfolio is the overreaching umbrella that encompasses all because another thing that's part of the portfolio here, the one key word that you need to see is it says operations. Earlier I talked about day-to-day operations. Your operations may still need some of those resources that you're needing for your projects that are part of the program and in the portfolio. So it's that fine dance again. You know, if that same wiring team that's wiring a new building, suddenly something happens at one of the other facilities, they may be called off for an emergency situation to get power back up and running or to repair something. So the portfolio is all of it, and it's managed at a very high level. - This is, again, extremely helpful to understand kind of the umbrella effect, but I'm a visual learner, and so it'd be really helpful if we could kind of map out how it all works together. Can we do that? - Sure, sure, let me show you a graphic that I've made. So first of all, we have that overarching umbrella. It's the portfolio. It is everything. And it does include operations. Although I'm not including any examples for operations because we're talking about this in a project management context. So first of all, you may have several different programs, and within each of those programs, the projects exist. So one program may have two projects. Another program may have three, four, or even more. But then somewhere in the middle of all of those programs that include projects, you're going to have this little outlier. It's a one-off. It's a project that doesn't really fit in a program, but it's still a project. So as you can see, all of those pieces encompass the entire portfolio. So the projects that are outside of a program, they're still important, but they're not really affected by that program. So here you see the relationship. You have your master portfolio that includes programs, that includes, may include one or more projects, and then you have those standalone projects. - I, again, visual learner. This is exactly what I was hoping for, just trying to understand how a portfolio kind of is the interrelationship of all these projects and programs working together. And then you have to realize on an even smaller scale the day-to-day operations. And so, Robin, thank you so much for kind of breaking it down, and I'm sure that we're going to use this as we move forward. - Oh, definitely, definitely. - So, don't go anywhere. We've got more "Project+" waiting right after this for you. - [Announcer] Thank you for watching ITProTV.

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