Project portfolio selection through decision support

Abstract

<p>Project portfolio selection is a crucial decision in many organizations which must choose, from a variety of possible investments of available resources, those which can best meet organizational objectives. For example, firms involved in engineering, construction, or new product development, and many firms investing in information technology projects, often have more proposed projects than resources to support them. They must make informed decisions where the appropriate distribution of investment is complex, due to varying levels of risk, resource requirements, and interaction among the proposed projects. In previous work we have suggested a framework that builds on the strengths of existing project selection methods to help overcome the complexity of project portfolio selection, by simplifying the process through a logical series of steps. This process can be adapted to use those techniques preferred by the organization, and it lends itself to computer decision support. In this paper we discuss the implementation of the on-line portion of our framework in the form of a decision support system (DSS) which we call PASS (Project Analysis and Selection System). We describe the results of laboratory tests undertaken to measure its usability and the quality of its results, compared to manual selection processes, in typical portfolio selection problems. We also discuss the potential of PASS in supporting corporate decision making, through exposure this system has received at several interested companies.</p>