ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the perspective of a supplier organization that provides business solutions to external clients. Portfolio management is the life of people business, being able to deal with competing requirements in a pool of finite resources. Communication is also vital to success, which means not only within the project teams but also between portfolio and project managers and other managers in the organization, such as those in finance, purchasing and human resources management. Document templates serve as knowledge repositories from previous projects of a similar type. Although there are rare exceptions, typically each project has a finite start and ending. At initiation a timeline is developed which will lead the project through its different stages. The responsibility assignment matrix is important, but perhaps less familiar to many project practitioners. Resource scheduling is much easier at project initiation than during project delivery, owing to changes and variations from time plans.
