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31
Optimization and Alignment Scenario
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) Scenario: Wendy Wheeler, vice president of
business planning at Contoso Pharmaceuticals, is informed by the CFO that the board
approved a $25 million budget for her group. Though an increase over last year’s budget,
it is not enough to undertake every project request submitted.
Using Office Project Portfolio Server 2007, Wendy opens a project portfolio and loads the
Portfolio Optimizer. A strategic value score for each project is already automatically
calculated, so Wendy uploads cost and resource estimates from the detailed business
cases. She quickly determines that to complete all projects in the portfolio (to gain 100
percent of the strategic value) would cost $57 million. Wendy enters the budget
restriction of $25 million and runs the Portfolio Optimizer module’s optimization algorithm
to dynamically identify the best project portfolio under the budgetary constraints. The
initial portfolio selection looks good, delivering 68 percent of overall strategic value for
that budget level.
However, Wendy notices that a mandatory compliance project and two pet projects of the
CFO have not been included in the optimal portfolio. Wendy uses the force-in feature to
make sure that the compliance and CFO pet projects are automatically included in the
portfolio. This time the Portfolio Optimizer selects a new portfolio of projects, delivering
54 percent of the overall strategic value given the $25 million constraint and the forced-
in projects. As expected, some higher-value projects fall out of the portfolio to make
room for the compliance project and pet projects.