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Solution Experience

  • PPM Tools Implementation Support (Telco Industry)
  • Risk-Mgmt / Program Impact Analysis (Chemical Industry)
  • PPM Tool Selection Support (Public Sector)
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    Portfolio Management

    Tactically regaining full control over your IT investments

    Competition. This simple word drives so many business trends. Among them: the need to align everything within your organization with your business strategy. Everything includes IT.

    But, if starting ex nihilo, IT strategic alignment takes time.

    Nonetheless, some organizations, in a matter of a few months, are able to improve their IT capabilities to achieve tremendous business improvements, and with significantly lower budget than some of their peers.

    So, what's so special about them? Are there any ways to replicate best practices which can help you achieve the same results – that is to better align our IT with a lower budget and with quick results?

    The answer resides in taking a look at what people experienced at optimizing their investments are doing for sometime.

    Besides IT strategic alignment, which truly can take some time to achieve its maximum effect, there are several tactical steps which can bring fast and effective improvement of the way you govern your IT. Probably, one of these best initiatives is to replicate what worldwide trade financiers are doing for several decades: apply best practices of finance portfolio management to the realm of IT projects.

    This is basically what Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is all about: a set of methods drafted as a means to manage IT projects portfolio as an investment portfolio.

    The key objective of Project Portfolio Management is to quickly but effectively rationalize your project portfolio with a view to securing alignment of your current and perpetually evolving IT with business needs and strategy (which are also constantly evolving by the way). As compared with IT strategic alignment, which effectiveness needs lengthy, definite efforts; PPM can be seen as a tactical way to implement quick wins.

    So, what do you think if you could free up in the coming weeks more IT investment on promising new business initiative and still having your current IT perfectly under control?

    Cambridge Project Portfolio Management services is the right solution if...

    • You need to arbitrate among multiple investment opportunities
    • You have difficulties in efficiently communicating and sharing information with business stakeholders
    • You want to regain control over your IT spending and would like to know how much and in which areas you should be spending
    • You are facing an overflow of sometimes redundant or unrealistic demands from business stakeholders
    • You have difficulties identifying which projects will most impact business value
    • You would like to use smart IT spending to fuel business growth
    • You would like to optimize resource allocation according to the IT value for business and a honest assessment of project risks
    • You would like to be able to manage your IT evolution by monitoring budget allocation and make sure that trade-offs are appropriate

    Cambridge's solutions and service offering

    Cambridge's management consultants have the capabilities to get involved in all or some of the typical areas of project portfolio management, which are:

  • Resource management
  • Time management
  • Finance management
  • Demand management
  • Risk management


    • We usually use a participative workshop approach of PPM, along with our highly effective workshop facilitation methods, to jointly carry out with your help and commitment:

  • The design of a specific business case for your organization, taking into account your industry, your vision, your constraints and your operational as well as strategic goals
  • The honest assessment of your current situation and maturity to set the baseline for your starting point, and the design of an achievable target for your organization
  • The definition of the most appropriate, fully actionable roadmap to work towards your targeted situation, according to the current baseline, your priorities, your budget and all other constraints

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  • The implementation of the necessary governance rules to make sure that your effort won't be a one-shot attempt to improve your IT, but doomed on the long range due to the lack of guiding rules to transform your one-time initiative into a long-term, unremitting, and intrinsic philosophy of managing portfolios of projects


    • Finally, in addition to helping you in implementing your brand new PPM initiative, our offering incorporates our successful tool selection and implementation practices, from discovery to full adoption; with a view to automating and thus institutionalizing the golden rules of project portfolio management.

    And remember that our engagements are always performed under direct supervision of a principal, with the following key principles in mind:

  • Impactful
  • Relevant and priority-driven
  • Actionable principles, clarity and simplicity whenever possible
  • Full knowledge transfer

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