16 January, 2025

PPP – Project – Program – Portfolio: What’s the Difference?


Projects, Programs, and Portfolios. Are they the same? Project Management, Program Management, Portfolio Management: What’s the difference?

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This is learning, so, sit back and enjoy

Portfolio Management

A portfolio is a collection of projects and programs that are aligned with an organization’s strategic goals.

Portfolio Management is selecting and managing the right programs and projects to deliver the organization’s strategic goals. It:

  • Has a broad scope that often represents a significant transformation for the sponsoring organization. Review of the portfolio will be part of the strategic planning process. Organizations aim to continually optimize their portfolios to balance risk and opportunity.
  • Encompasses all (or a significant part) of an organization’s projects and programs.
  • Provides a high-level view of an organization’s strategic initiatives.
  • Secures and allocates the resources that portfolio projects and programs need.
  • Involves strategic decision-making about resource allocation and prioritization.

Program Management

A program is a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to achieve a strategic goal or goals.

Program Management oversees a set of projects and sub-programs that share a common overall goal. It:

  • Has a broad scope of work that represents a significant part of the scope of a roader portfolio. It can evolve over the duration of the program and may result in the termination, creation, or modification of constituent projects.
  • Manages interdependencies in resourcing and scheduling among the constituent projects.

Project Management

A project is a coordinated set of tasks that together create a defined new product process or service, within a constrained time and resource budget. It:

  • Has a constrained scope that may be fully defined early on (predictive PM) or may emerge from the drawdown from a set of possible customer or user requirements (adaptive PM). Represents a specific change that the sponsoring organization needs to achieve. The scope may change in the light of new threats and opportunities
  • Has a defined start and end date
  • Requires a defined set of resources.
  • Has a specific goal or objective.

Project Management defines, plans, and delivers this specific scope of work, to create one or more products, services, or processes. It manages this within constraints of time, budget, and quality requirements.

To summarize:

  1. Portfolio: A large collection of projects and programs aligned with an organization’s strategy.
  2. Program: A collection of related projects working towards a shared goal or goals.
  3. Project: The smallest unit of work, focused on a specific goal.

However, one thing matters more than any other

Don’t sweat it.

If you want to argue over the niceties of whether what you have is a project or a program, or whether it’s a program or a portfolio, fine. But please don’t waste your time doing it on paid time. Take the discussion to the coffee shop or the bar.

The real world is messy. And sometimes labels are as much about politics as about technical definitions. So, call whatever you are tasked to deliver what you like. What really matters is what you need to do, and how best to do it efficiently, effectively, and responsibly.

Let’s start with the three ‘what is’ videos, What is…

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What Kit Does a Project Manager Need?

I asked Project Managers in a couple of forums what material things you need to have, to do your job as a Project Manager. They responded magnificently. I compiled their answers into a Kit list. I added my own. 

Check out the Kit a Project Manager needs

Note that the links are affiliated.

Learn Still More

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If you want basic Management Courses – free training hosted on YouTube, with 2 new management lessons a week, check out our sister channel, Management Courses.

For more of our Project Management videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management.

For more of our videos in themed collections, join our Free Academy of Project Management

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Mike Clayton

About the Author...

Dr Mike Clayton is one of the most successful and in-demand project management trainers in the UK. He is author of 14 best-selling books, including four about project management. He is also a prolific blogger and contributor to ProjectManager.com and Project, the journal of the Association for Project Management. Between 1990 and 2002, Mike was a successful project manager, leading large project teams and delivering complex projects. In 2016, Mike launched OnlinePMCourses.
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