Project Portfolio Management - a multiple case study of six Swedish companies

Other conference contribution, 2005

This paper presents the results from a multiple case study of Project Portfolio Management practices among six Swedish companies. Project portfolio management has gained much interest among practitioners in recent years, while earlier research has shown that using project portfolio management in practice is complex as it involves crucial decisions about the company’s future. Such research has so far focused on the practices in US and UK companies and the present paper is to be seen as a complement. The results from the study show that all of the companies concerned have formal processes for evaluating and choosing projects for the portfolio. However, only half of them consider the project portfolio as a factor in their decisions. Two of the companies review the project portfolio regularly, and two use project portfolio management tools and methods. The decisions on the project portfolio composition are made on a cross-functional basis with people from different levels and organizational units involved.