Course Description

For product development and R&D project portfolios, the adage about “the whole being more than the sum of the parts” applies. Analyzing and planning the portfolio as an aggregate investment results in identifying higher-value portfolios and driving superior execution. Inter-project relationships and strategic criteria further support the need for taking a portfolio perspective in allocating organizational resources. The paradigm shift of viewing project investments and returns in a portfolio context “unlocks” hidden value available in your managerial decision making.

This skills development workshop will enable professionals from all relevant functional areas to collect and relate the appropriate data for projects, to properly quantify the value creation and investment costs of projects, and to measure portfolio performance in a way that is meaningful for managerial decision making.

Course Objectives

• Identify the value creation possible by managing your time, people, and money as a portfolio investment with its associated portfolio risk and return

• Learn the finance, economics, and analytics to continually invest your resources in projects that maximize business performance and achieve your strategic objectives

• Model your product development and R&D operations properly, including inter-project dependencies and mutually exclusive variants on project options

• Ensure that your tools and processes supporting project portfolio management are properly structured and rigorously implemented

Course Outline

• Project Selection vs. Project Portfolio Planning

• Projects as Real Assets of a Financial Portfolio

• Project-level Business Case & Value Creation

• Financial Metrics & Investment Decision Rules

• Organizational Human Resource and Budget Modeling

• Portfolio-level Metrics & Valuation

• Portfolio Performance Optimization

• Sensitivity Analysis & Efficient Frontiers

• Planned Resource Utilization

• Comparing Scenarios & Quantifying “What-ifs”

• Portfolio-level Strategy Implementation

• Project-specific Risk vs. Risk Diversification

• Development Pipeline Prioritization & Sequencing

• Planned Expenditure Reporting