When attempts are made to integrate project and portfolio management products with financial systems – and the rest of the IT management environment – the results tend to be clunky, difficult to use, and expensive to maintain. To make matters worse, when project execution problems stem from activities in other systems, the solutions are often outside the control of the project manager or a project management office (PMO).

But by putting project and portfolio management (PPM) at the heart of an extensive ecosystem, every step in a portfolio element’s lifecycle is properly managed and synchronized. This approach provides, among other benefits, consistent treatment of related data as well as appropriate data retention and passage through the lifecycle.

The modern PMO – along with colleagues in operations, development, and service management – achieves this with a set of key core capabilities and an appropriate ecosystem. These capabilities must work on the same platform to provide consistent governance and efficient data management. With the right management approach, your organization can improve demand balancing, resource usage, and workforce efficiency while improving financial control and visibility.