The ever-increasing penetration of

The ever-increasing penetration of projects as a way to organise work in many organisations
necessitates effective management of multiple projects. This has resulted in a greater
interest in the processes of project portfolio management (PPM), with more and more
software tools being developed to assist and automate the process. Much of the early work
on PPM concentrated on the management of IT projects, largely from the perspective of the
management of resources and risk. Many of the recent articles have been by vendors of the
software, promoting the value of the PPM process. However, the claims made in those
articles are typically only supported by anecdotal evidence. In this paper, we assess
whether there is a correspondence between the use of PPM processes and techniques, and
improvements in the performance of projects and portfolios of projects. Based on our
findings, we introduce a three-stage classification scheme of PPM adoption, and present a
strong correlation between (1) increasing adoption of PPM processes and a reduction in
project related problems, and (2) between PPM adoption and project performance