A theme that I found running through the many of the presentations at IPM Day 2011 was the importance of program or portfolio management. There were maybe 5 or 6 presentations about PMOs, or the value of program management, or importance of project prioritization and PMO best practices. All of the presentations approached the topic from a different angle and provided new insights, but they all shared one message – the importance of project portfolio management. Ardi Ghorashy, IIL Trainer and Consultant, would be an expert in this area and delivered two presentations on the topic.

In his first presentation, Ardi discussed how a PPM helps give firms focus and discipline necessary to prioritize and manage the projects that are most important to the business. In his second presentation “Synergy, Continuous Improvement and Organizational Learning: the Value-Pack of Program Management,” Ardi looks at what he calls the value-package a program management delivers to an organization, and then he provides an overview of PMI best practices for successful program management.

But first let’s just briefly look at some of the reasons why managing project portfolios are so important. Programs help organizations:

- Identify project dependencies

- Enable better communication within the organization

- Set priorities at the program level, eliminating personal priorities that may affect the business value of a project

- Create a knowledge base of lessons learned from past projects, both successful and failed

So what is the value-package that program management delivers? If the presentation’s title didn’t give it away, I’ll repeat it here. With program management, firms will experience synergy, continuous organizational improvement and organizational learning. I think we can all agree that all organizations can benefit from those three advantages.

I recommend you check out this talk from Ardi Ghorashy at IPM Day 2011, available on-demand now, where he discusses the PMI standard for program management and how you can make program management successful in your organization.