"Definition of Terms"

Introduction

In the context of the product development, the MOBA project management takes care of the best possible realization of all steps, from an idea to the finished product. This entire cycle is called the MOBA product development process.
As part of the presentation of the MOBA project management, we would like to bring you a closer look at the details of MOBA project management in several reports.
In this report you will find further definitions of our project management.

Management of a Project Portfolio 

The term portfolio (lat. portare “to carry“ and folium “sheet“) defines a collection of objects of a special type.
In the financial world portfolio is a bundle of investments, held by an institution or an individual. In marketing a portfolio is a collection of products, services, projects or brands offered by a company.

In contrast, the management of a project portfolio in project management, where efficient realization and timely completion of individual projects is in major focus, is a permanent task including planning, prioritization, comprehensive controlling and monitoring all projects of a Company.

The management of a project portfolio serves to achieve important company targets:
- Achieving business targets;
- Raising the Return on Investment for projects;
- Generating and maintaining a well-balanced “healthy“ project portfolio;
- Prioritization of projects according to the company’s strategic targets;
- Retaining the balance between project risks and project benefits.

An important aim of the project portfolio management is to find, select and execute the “right“ projects in cyclically repeated analyses to enhance the project economy’s Efficiency.
These selected projects form the project portfolio.

To achieve the targets mentioned above the portfolio management distinguishes two main processes:
- Project selection
Among others this includes the definition of new projects to realize company targets of higher importance and evaluating requested projects by approving, postponing and rejecting project requests.
- Controlling project portfolios
Among others this includes the continuous supervision of projects from the orderer’s view, the performance of comprehensive project and quality management tasks as well as cross-project information and knowledge management.

Project controlling

DIN 69904 (Project management systems) describes controlling as "Processes and regulations, contributing the achievement of project targets".
These processes range from data logging to comparing planning data and detecting deviations up to evaluating the consequences and participating in the planning of counteractive measures and their supervision.
Project controlling deals with all levels of a project. The three main areas are: “quality, costs and time“. The project controlling‘s task is to evaluate every activity referring all 3 factors; to define, coordinate and monitor them.
These three factors (quality, costs and time), with their mutual interference, are also known as the "magical triangle" of project management.
More information and further details on the magical triangle can be found in one of our next publications.

Resource Management

The time and space management of manpower, machines, tools and other auxiliary means needed for project work is part of the resource management.
Often resource management is only defined as personnel resource planning for project work.
In the beginning, a project is often planed with so called "generic resources", that means, with neutral resources, where only the required properties are defined.
For more information about "generic resources", see our report part 3.
Part III

Conclusion

For MOBA project management to work well, it needs well-defined terms, so that everyone speaks the "same language". For this reason, we have created a MOBA lexicon over all these terms which helps us to better and faster realize our tasks in project management.
This was part 5 of a series of articles with regards to MOBA's Project Management.

Read the first four parts here:
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

To be continued …