Research On The Benefits Realisation Management Throughout The Project Portfolio Lifecycle:a Strategy-oriented Framework

Organizations undertake project portfolio management(PPM)as a vital means to implement strategy and realize value.By selecting and implementing the most relevant projects and programs,PPM helps organizations to transform strategy into benefits and competitiveness.However,this transformation is not a trivial task due to the gap between different organizational hierarchies(the transformation process involves senior managers,project portfolio managers and project managers),as well as the uncertainties in the environment(such as market shifting,technological changes,etc.).The misalignment between projects and strategy,and the disruptions and delays induced by the uncertainties both hinder the project portfolio success and induce a high strategy failure rate.Under these circumstances,this thesis proposes a project portfolio benefits realisation management(BRM)framework,aiming at best realizing the organizational strategy and dealing with unexpected events from a dynamic and systematic perspective.The main content and contributions can be summarized as follows:(1)A strategy-oriented project portfolio benefits realisation framework is proposed.By integrating BRM with project portfolio lifecycle and governance hierarchies,the transformation process from strategy to project goals and then to the organizational value is discussed from synergetic and value-chain perspectives.The core elements of dynamic project portfolio benefits realisation are then discussed.Combining the Benefits Dependency Network and Balanced Scorecard methods,a benefits evaluation criteria system is proposed.This section creatively combines the project management theory with strategy management theory,and helps managers to understand the benefits management responsibilities at strategic,portfolio and project levels.(2)A FCA-based portfolio balancing model is proposed to align projects with multi-dimensional benefits.Considering the different dimensions of organizational strategy,this section guarantees the strategic balance of the project portfolio by protecting resources for different strategic intentions.It firstly allocates priority and resources to multiple strategic benefits,forming different resource “buckets” to achieve the alignment between resources and strategic intentions.Then the content of strategic contribution similarity is proposed to categorize the projects with similar strategic goals to different “buckets”,which helps with alignment between project initiatives and the organizational strategy with the consideration of project synergies.The FCA method is proposed to provide a soft categorization for project initiatives and an example is illustrated to validate the model.(3)A SD-based dynamic project benefits realisation model is constructed.The impacts of uncertainty on project benefits realisation at a strategic and a tactical level are respectively denoted as “Strategic Change” and “Disruptions & Delays”.Embedded with both uncertainties,the model experiments with typical remedial actions to disturbances during the implementation of a project under a behavioral paradigm.Simple proportional adjustment seems to work well under low levels of unexpected disturbances but prospect theory-based behavior works better under extreme situations.Our findings indicate that over-reacting behavior,which is influenced by biases and reporting errors,can generate project escalation.This model presents an efficient project monitoring and control system to provide transparent suggestions for project decision makers.(4)A SD-based dynamic project portfolio benefits realisation model is constructed.Systematically integrating the impacts of uncertainties,interdependencies and behavioral biases,the model is tested in different uncertainty scenarios and a “bounded-control” resource re-allocation strategy is described.The results demonstrate that the remedial actions at portfolio level should be made according to the strategic return on investment,instead of the traditional logic as bringing the projects “back on track” in terms of the deviations from initial plans.Specifically,this section defines two interdependencies between multiple projects as resource competition and synergetic effects,and explores how synergetic effects would interact with uncertainties under resource constraints.The behaviors of risk reduction and risk diffusion are demonstrated.Remedial actions are made under complex scenarios and a decision point can be achieved by the simulation.The impacts of behavioral factors like reporting errors,optimism biases and fixed implementation priorities are explored,which highlights the importance of considering human behavior in project portfolio decision-making.