Day #43: Gender Pay Gap

We are almost at the end of the blog... so it's time to bring up again an important subject: the gender pay gap. To do so, we will use an article from the Financial Times which uses data for masters in management rankings over the past decade, for alumni three years after graduation. Some facts illustrated with figures:

• Three years after graduating with a masters in management, the median salary for men is higher than for women in every sector of employment. Healthcare and finance have the greatest gender pay gap.
• When the pay of men and women is compared by seniority, women are ahead only in mid-level management positions.
• Finance and consultancy have always been the top destinations of Masters in Management graduates. Together, they represent 45-50% of the alumni.
• Law, finance and consultancy are the sectors with the highest salaries.
• Most alumni who moved to a different country after graduating in MiM see a rise in salary, specially in healthcare. Law is the only sector where movers see a lower mean salary.

Image from ft.com

Day #33: Business strategy

Following the Monday post with some tips about how to deal with some of the course assignments, it is time to focus on business strategy. This is a key concept which needs to be analyzed or described before checking whether a company's portfolio is aligned with it or not. 

However, when looking for such words in The Portfolio Standard from PMI, they barely appear. So maybe we should try to find some hints about what business strategy is and how it can be described.

There are some good descriptions in several websites, for instance here o here. The basics are shortly described in this post.

Firstly, business strategies can be classified into three levels: 

• Corporate level, which sets the broadest guidelines of what is to be achieved and how it will be done.
• Business unit level, which is a specific strategy depending on the unit of business.
• Functional level, which are specific for the departments within the units, like marketing, sales, operations and so on. 

Then, when the objective is decided, the answers to all W-questions regarding the strategy (what, when, why, how...) should be answered. In order to do that, there are some useful tools such as: 

• Mission, vision and core values. 
• SWOT
• Resource allocation plan
• KPI
• ...

Day #32: Risk management analysis

One of the parts of portfolio management is risk management and their policies. Actually, risk management is a subject itself, with its life cycle, its tools and so on. It is difficult to go deeper without facing complicated stuff, but hopefully there are many resources available to help us.

Today I want to introduce you to one useful document that I found about risk assessment techniques. It is the International Standart IEC 31010. After a short description of key concepts such as uncertainty and risk, the process to implement a risk assessment policy is described in detail. Then, many risk assessment techniques are presented... and here it comes, the part I like the most. There is a categorization of techniques, so that we can quickly see which one is the most suitable for our problem. Besides, we could go for one technique or the other depending on which step of the risk assessment process we are at, and that is also included in the table.

Finally, the las pages are devoted to a thorough description of each techniques, including their limitations. I think that this document is outstandingly useful. I found the full document here, yet when I tried to access it today, I couldnt't... so here is a preview.

Day #31: Determining projects, programs and portfolios

Now that we are more than halfway through the course, it has been time to work on some assignments. Despite having read the recommended literature, sometimes it is difficult to fully gasp all concepts. Specially because in the PMI books there are no examples. Of course, that makes complete sense since it is a guide and not an academic book, yet it can be obscure for people not used to the field. 

One of the first issues I encountered in the assignment was to distinguish between the programs and portfolios in a real company. I have read the differences many times, even watched and posted some videos about it, but I still needed to find some examples to relate (shame on me!).

This is one good example that I found, applied to the aeronautic industry. This is another example with clothes and shoes. And finally this is yet another example with paint. Now it should be easier to apply concepts from PMI to real life... maybe not to those complex multinational companies, but surely at a medium level. Good luck!

Image from inc.com

Day #29: Porter's Five Forces

At yesterday's post we mentioned several analysis tools that were used in the report, like SWOT, PESTLE and Porter's Five Forces. The former two are very well know, or at least more familiar to the reader. The latter is also widely used, but it may be hidden deeper in our memory. So let's review it!

Porter's Five Forces analysis helps to determine the competition level at a certain industry, therefore it is useful when starting a new business or expanding to a new sector. Basically, the state of competition depends on five forces:

• Threat of new entrants, which depends on the barriers to enter a certain industry. For example, such threat is low in the airline industry - important investments are needed - but it is quite high in the app market - almost everybody can launch a new app!.

• Bargaining power of suppliers, which depends on the number of suppliers and on whether it is easy or not for a company to find a substitute supplier and switch. For example, the power of suppliers is high in the airline industry - how many aircraft manufacturers can you think of?.

• Bargaining power of buyers, which depends on how much pressure buyers can put on a company. It is also related to the buyer's sensitivity to price changes and how easy it is for them to switch from one company to another. For example, in the airline industry such power is high - there are a lot of alternatives and the choice tends to be cost-driven -, but for Apple customers it is very difficult to move to another OS once they have become used to iOS products.

• Threat of substitute products, which depends on how many similar products there are in the market which respond to the same customer need. For example, threat of substitute products in the smartphone manufacturing industry can be considered as high - there are lots of brands to choose from!

• Rivalry among existing competitors, which depends on the total number of competitors and what each competitor can do. For example, in the airline industry there is a high rivalry between airlines.

Image from travelandleisure.com

Day #28: Report on Global Project Portfolio Management Market 2019-2028

A new report has been published about the Global Project Portfolio Management Market 2019 Trends, which focuses on the top key players and their framework. There is a quantitative and qualitative analysis, with focus on SWOT, PESTLE and Porter's Five Forces analysis of the global market. Besides, there is a forecast up to 2028.

A sample copy of the report study can be downloaded, where some interesting aspects are developed:

• Competitors analysis of Project Portfolio Management Market
• Market Leading Players
• Market Segmentation
• Product Volumen Analysis
• ... 

Image from business.bell.ca

Day #27: What the Heck is Project Portfolio Management?

The title may sound a bit harsh, but sometimes that is the feeling we have when going through the bibliography. So today's post is a webinar which explains what Project Portfolio Management is. The author is Jamal Moustafaev, president and founder of Thinktank Consulting and a well-known speaker and author of several books about PM. 

The webinar may be a bit long compared to other videos that I have been sharing, but that is because it is full of content. I particularly like the amount of examples he shows from around the world. I think they really help to gain a better understanding. 

First ten minutes of the webinar

As a bonus, I really recommend the website where this webinar is available. I found the video on Youtube, where the first ten minutes of the talk can be seen. But the website is called The Great IT Professional, and it is full of interesting and useful webinars. Some of them are more technical whereas others are more about leadership. In any case, they are worth checking!

Day #26: Portofolio Management and Japanese renewable energy

As we have mentioned many times, the PMI is not only the main association in the PM world, but also a very useful source to keep ourselves informed. 

In particular, there are interesting news regarding portfolio management. For example this piece of news, Sustainable Change, which talks about how the Japanese energy industry changed after Fukushima. The author, Rajeev Supekar, has managed renewable energy projects in Japan for years. He explains the factors that helped a whole country to embrace the disruption and use it to make a transition towards renewable energies. 

Now that energy and climate are in the centre of all discourses, it can be a good idea to take Japan as an example. Besides, articles like this can help us understand the transversality of portfolio management. 

Image from nrdc.org

Note that many articles from PMI can be accessed just by creating a free account at PMI website, without getting a full membership!

Day #24: Larger number of women in investing roles

It is good to keep hearing positive news about gender equality in all fields. Some days ago I shared a post about an interview to women working in project management, and today it is the turn to say something about portfolio management. In this case, it is a study from Preqin which says that 23% of hedge fund investment team and portfolio management positions are held by women, compared to 6% two years earlier. 

Getty Images

However, there are some bad (or neutral?) news as well. The highest growth in female-held positions was in investor relations and marketing, traditional areas for women. About 48% of marketing employees worldwide were women in 2019!

Read the full note here: Preqin seeing larger number of women in investing roles

Day #23: Interview with a Portfolio Manager

Sometimes it is very interesting to hear real professionals talking about their jobs. In this case, Matt Blume, a portfolio manager working in the industry is interviewed by Curated Careers. It is short but very enlightening!

Day #22: Portfolio Management for New Products

I have found an interesting document that I would like to share. It is called Portfolio Management for New Products - Picking the Winners. It is a short essay written by Dr. Robert G. Cooper and Dr. Scott J. Edgett, two experts in product innovation who have written several articles and books. Besides, at the end of the essay there is a list of additional reading that can be useful for newbies.

The document is about how to prioritise projects and resources across development projects. The authors focus on four goals of portfolio management:

• Maximize the value of your portfolio
• Seek balance in your portfolio
• Your portfolio  must be strategically aligned
• Pick the right number of projects

One of the tools that are included is the bubble diagram, which represents the project in a grid where the axes are the probability of technical success and the reward. Depending on where the projects land, there are four regions which describe what the projects can be: "Bread and Butter", "White Elephants", "Pearls" and "Oysters". I really liked the names! Here you can see it better (figure from the paper):

Day #21: Portfolio Management Lifecycle and some extra thoughts

Digging deeper and deeper in the PM world, these weeks we are focusing on Portfolio Management. Associated to it, we talk about lifecycle. The Portfolio Management Lifecycle has three phases (planning, authorizing and monitoring/controlling) according to the PMI, which should be treated as a continuous loop. The processes in the phases are classified into two groups: aligning process group and controlling process group. More information can be found in the recommended course bibliography and in some short and illustrative articles such as this.

However, if we try to find more information about the portfolio management lifecycle, we usually find references to other concepts which use the same words but in different order, such as Product Lifecycle Management. It sounds like a joke or a tongue-twister, but a closer look to the words helps finding the real meaning.

For example, articles like this show the difference between Product Portfolio Management (PPM) and Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). Often, these two are believed to be very similar, or integrated. In fact, they share the same goals but they are completely different. Engineers use PLM to control how products are built, and business professionals use PPM to know which products to create and how to make them successful.

So, take-home message for today: it's important to carefully read the concepts in this world!

Day #19: Strategic management techniques applied to Project & Portfolio Management

Following previous posts about research in this field, I share an article today named Advancing project and portfolio management research: Applying strategic management theories. It's a long paper, yet it is good to keep as a future reference, because it contains a thorough summary of portfolio management literature. 

I'll include here the first paragraphs so that you get an idea of what it is about:

"Project Management (PM) research and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) research advance through the use of theories from the strategic management domain and, in turn, the research contributes to the development and strengthening of these theories by providing empirical examples for testing and validation. This paper focuses on a set of theoretical strategic perspectives — the Resource-Based View (RBV), the Dynamic Capability (DC) concept, and the Absorptive Capacity (AC) concept — and their application to PM and PPM research. Through an overview of these strategic management perspectives and their application to PM and PPM research, this paper aims to contribute to the development of this research field by highlighting the challenges and lessons learned, and by providing examples and guidance for future research."

In fact, there is a very nice table before the conclusions where all this approaches are compared in a very compact way. But, if you don't want to go through it now, at least let me focus on the definition of the three concepts mentioned as theoretical strategic perspectives*:

- Resource-Based View (RBV): it's an approach that assumes that resources and capabilities are not uniform accross competing organizations and therefore this heterogeneity is used to explain differences in success rates.

- Dynamic Capabilities (DC): it's an approach that focuses on the organization's ability to build, configure and integrate internal and external capabilities to deal with sudden environmental changes.

- Absorptive Capacity (AC): it's an approach that is based on learning and acquiring knowledge from the external environment, sometimes reinforced by the use of internal strategies.

As you may see, there are endless concepts in the world of  PM!

*All the definitions come from the aforementioned paper.

Day #18: Funny Project, Program and Portfolio Management

One of the most important things when dealing with complex subjects is to be able to explain them in an easy and understandable way. It is even better if it is in a fun way. One good example is the book Portfolio and Programme Management Demystified, by Geoff Reiss and Paul Rayner, where the most relevant concepts of this discipline are explained. One friend recommended it to me and I've been able to take a short look at it. 

Picture from Amazon

The book is written in a much simpler way than the literature from the PMI and it has some fun notes. For example, one of the best sentences from the first chapter is "'Urgent' and 'high-priority' are business speak for 'unplanned'". That reminds me on one sign that I saw at someone's office: "Lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on my part". Take home message: it is important to learn how to plan!

Day #16: Portfolio vs Project Management

The topic for this week is slightly different from BRM: we enter into the world of Portfolio Management. As it may sound a bit obscure, I guess it is important to clarify the differences with Project Management from the beginning. Of course, we could always relate to the suggested literature from the PMI, but sometimes it's easier if someone explains it for us. That's why today I'm bringing a video, from projectmanagement.com to learn the basics about Portfolio Management in 5 minutes. Enjoy!