Portfolio and Programme Management Demystified: Managing Multiple Projects Successfully

You’re now responsible for a programme, or you’ve got a portfolio to manage? Where do you start? Right here!

Projects are not simply the bread and butter of an organisation. Form them into programmes or portfolios and they can be prioritised and integrated to deliver change to your organization in line with your strategic vision. You will be able to control costs and risks and bring together a complex series of themes effectively.

This overhauled second edition now combines portfolio management as a parallel theme with programme management, and it is brought in line with the current thinking of the Association for Project Management and the Project Management Institute. It is written for managers in both the public and private sectors. This new edition includes half a dozen short case studies (from Belgium’s Fortis Bank, a software company, local government, and central government), along with more on cross-functional management.

Together with Project Management Demystified, also from Routledge (third edition, 2007), it provides the tools to manage your projects, your programmes and your portfolio to a very high level.

Geoff Reiss is Senior Architect with Program Management Group plc. He has extensive experience in the construction industry and has grown into the project management specialism over a varied career.

Paul Rayner After an early career with IBM in Australia Paul Rayner began a lifelong interest in the best ways of managing large scale corporate projects. He was a Commercial Projects Manager for Cybernet Timesharing in the 70’s, and principle of Great Northern Computer Services. After gaining his MBA he joined Logica plc as a Management Consultant, where he worked until his retirement in 2011. He chaired the Association for Project Management’s Programme Management Group, wrote the APM Introduction to Programme Management, and co-authored the Gower Handbook of Programme Management (2006).

He worked extraordinarily hard to improve approaches to portfolio and programme management, cheerfully giving his time to speak at events throughout the world. He was also a committed family man who took great pride in supporting the achievements of his three children. When he knew he was dying of cancer, he was determined to finish Portfolio and Programme Management Demystified, which he wanted to dedicate to them. He died, aged 64, in August 2011.

Donnie MacNicol Utilising his extensive PM experience across multiple industries Donnie leads consultancy, training, facilitation and mentoring assignments for global companies and government departments in developing project and programme leadership. Donnie chaired the Association for Project Management People Specific Interest Group for 10 years to 2011, is a Visiting Fellow at Kingston Business School, an individual member of the Acumen7 professional network and Partner at Synatus.