Capacity and Capability Management in IT PPM - Review

Abstract

Many organizations are now considering Project Portfolio Management (PPM) to ensure that their strategies are aligned with organizational goals. PPM provides senior executives, portfolio manager(s) and team, and stakeholders with an overarching view of their programs and/or projects, including how they fit into the organization's directives and strategy, advancing insights into the potential returns and risks involved. Through PPM, organizations intend to achieve their ultimate goals by linking PPM with organizational strategy to establish a balanced and executable plan, and that plan includes grouping different programs and projects, subsidiary portfolios, and operations managed to achieve strategic objectives. One of the main elements in PPM is portfolio resource capacity and capability management, to ensure that the portfolio’s capacity and capability demands are in alignment with portfolio objectives and can be supported or met by the organization’s resource capacities and capabilities, thus enabling successful portfolio execution and expected portfolio returns, and the capacity and capability management function plays a critical role in the organization’s overall portfolio management, from strategic planning to portfolio selection and optimization, through portfolio execution, to realizing the resulting value for the organization. Capacity management addresses what types of resources are needed, how many are needed, and when resources are needed to support portfolios, whereas Capability management elaborates what aspects of resource capacity are available and addresses the attributes, competencies, and skills associated with resources and organizational support for portfolios. To this end, this paper reviews the importance of the capability element in IT PPM to provide a competitive advantage in the marketplace and deliver a desired customer value proposition and the achievement of the organization’s goals and objectives. The outcomes indicate that IT PPM is, however, facing capability challenges, especially with soft skills in the managing project portfolio.