Portfolio Management
Our mission:
ALIGN people, processes and systems to integrate project development and execution functions and help our clients achieve their corporate objectives by improving capabilities to select, plan and execute capital projects.

Successful capital projects enable companies to increase revenue, enter new markets, adapt to changing conditions and improve productivity. Deciding what projects to fund and execute is a challenge that is only exceeded by the difficulty of managing an entire project portfolio. The commercial risks of a single project can reduce revenue, defer other investments, consume critical resources, and impact profitability. Successfully managing project portfolios can mitigate the potential for claims and disputes, reduce cost outlay and project duration, and dramatically improve return on investment.
Executive vision and leadership are the keys to successful Portfolio Management. At Blue Marble we bring executive perspective that is anchored by the fundamentals of project management and control.
We provide Portfolio Management services and also lead our clients through the business transformation into world class project operations by:

• Assessment and gap analysis of portfolio management maturity
• Design and development of project organizations
• Best practice process design and implementation
• Project information systems evaluation, selection and implementation

Project Portfolio Management practices have been proven to not only improve project cost and schedule performance, they produce better performing assets. We help clients adapt best practices to their businesses so they can understand and proactively manage capital investment risks and enjoy significant competitive advantage.

Portfolio Management is used to select a portfolio of new product development projects to achieve th following goals:

• Maximize the profitability or value of the portfolio
• Provide balance
• Support the strategy of the enterprise

Portfolio Management is the responsibility of the senior management team of an organization or business unit. This team, which might be called the Product Committee, meets regularly to manage the product pipeline and make decisions about the product portfolio. Often, this is the same group that conducts the stage-gate reviews in the organization.
A logical starting point is to create a product strategy - markets, customers, products, strategy approach, competitive emphasis, etc. The second step is to understand the budget or resources available to balance the portfolio against. Third, each project must be assessed for profitability (rewards), investment requirements (resources), risks, and other appropriate factors.
The weighting of the goals in making decisions about products varies from company. But organizations must balance these goals: risk vs. profitability, new products vs. improvements, strategy fit vs. reward, market vs. product line, long-term vs. short-term. Several types of techniques have been used to support the portfolio management process:

• Heuristic models
• Scoring techniques
• Visual or mapping techniques

The earliest Portfolio Management techniques optimized projects' profitability or financial returns using heuristic or mathematical models. However, this approach paid little attention to balance or aligning the portfolio to the organization's strategy. Scoring techniques weight and score criteria to take into account investment requirements, profitability, risk and strategic alignment. The shortcoming with this approach can be an over emphasis on financial measures and an inability to optimize the mix of projects. Mapping techniques use graphical presentation to visualize a portfolio's balance. These are typically presented in the form of a two-dimensional graph that shows the trade-off's or balance between two factors such as risks vs. profitability, marketplace fit vs. product line coverage, financial return vs. probability of success, etc.