Project Portfolio Analysis

Every project portfolio is impetus for making important decisions in many organizations and business enterprises either private or government institution. An example is the Transcontinental railroad which was a key factor in the industrial revolution and development of the United States in the late 19th century(Fishlow,1965). Business leaders began to face the challenges of labor laws and regulations from federal government and these challenges commenced the development of project management techniques like the Gantt Chart in the early 1914’s, the Fredrick Taylor’s Principles of Scientific Management in 1911 and subsequently the Program Evaluation Review Technique(PERT) and Critical Path Method, all in order to enhance project success in organizations.

The success or failure of a project portfolio is related to stakeholders’ perceptions of the value of the project i.e. the success or failure of a project is strongly influenced by both the expectations and capabilities of stakeholders and the willingness of the project manager to effectively manage these relationships within the organization. By definition, Stakeholders are individuals who either care about or have a vested interest in a project. They are the people who are actively involved with the work of the project or have something to either gain or lose as a result of the project. Freeman defined stakeholders as “any group of or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organization’s objectives (Freeman,

This began to be evident after the appearance of the success well-known book by Freeman. And over the last few years many authors stated clearly the extraordinary importance of stakeholders in project portfolio success (Burgoyne, 1999; Jergeas, Williamson, Skulmoski & Thomas, 2000; Freeman, 2002 & Dervitsiotis,2003). However, numerous projects are still plagued with delays and cost overruns which can be traced to stakeholder’s roles played in such project portfolios. One of the questions of this area is “how stakeholders are able to influence the project management”. According to Aaltonen and Kujala (2010) this question has not properly been addressed in various literatures. Answering this question is not an easy task because there is different point of views to define the concept of influence on project management and also there are different strategies stakeholders can use to influence a project (Aaltonen et al., 2008). In a nutshell, there is a need for a better comprehension of stakeholders’ impact on project success and identifying the magnitude of this impact to ensure project success in