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1、what management enactsAbstractAlthough companies manage project portfolios concordantly with project portfolio theory, they may experience problems in the form of delayed projects, resource struggles, stress, and a lack of overview. Based on a research project compromised of 128 in-depth interviews

2、in 30 companies, we propose that a key reason why companies do not do well in relation to project portfolio management （PPM） is that PPM often only covers a subset of on-going projects, while projects that are not subject to PPM tie up resources that initially were dedicated to PPM projects. We addr

3、ess and discuss the dilemma of wanting to include all projects in PPM, and aiming at keeping the resource and cognitive burden of doing PPM at a reasonable level.Keywords： Managing programmes， Managing projects，Organisation resources， Strategy1. IntroductionAt any given point in time, most companies

4、 engage in many projects. Some of these projects may relate to product development and marketing, others relate to changes in work processes and production flows, while yet others relate to competency development, strategic turns, the implementation of new IT systems, environmental issues etc. A key

5、 managerial task is to dedicate resources across all of these projects （as well as do daily work） and consequently,management across projects （project portfolio management （PPM） is critical to company performance.This paper is based on a large-scale qualitative study,which shows that many project-or

6、iented companies do not perform well when it comes to PPM. This relates to the inability to accomplish projects that are initiated. In particular, we identify the following problems: （1） Projects are not completed according to plan （or they even peter out during their project life cycle）;（2） Managem

7、ent and employees feel they lack a broad overview of on-going projects （especially when the number of on-going projects increases as more and more projects are not completed according to plan）;（3） People experience stress as resources are continuously reallocated across projects in order to make end

8、s meet. These observations are especially interesting because the companies were included in the research project because they were supposed to be especially,experienced in PPM, and because they actually engage in PPM according to the extant body of literature on PPM. For example, part of the compan

9、ies PPM included an effort to pick the best projects on the basis of explicit or implicit criteria, and an effort to allocate sufficient resources to these projects. However, despite efforts,to practice good PPM, these companies experience severe problems in relation to PPM especially in letting eno

10、ugh resources go into the right projects. The purpose of this paper is to confront PPM as advocated by normative theories with actual PPM practices. Hence, the purpose is to confront PPM theories with PPM as perceived by managers and other employees for whom PPM is part of, or affects, their work co

11、nditions. However, in this paper, we are more interested in PPM as enacted by companies than in universally true perceptions. Hence, we adhere to Weicks 13 notion of enactment as the preconceptions that are used to set aside a portion of the field of experience for further attention. In regard to PP

12、M, enacted projects are thus the ones management sets aside for further attention （i.e. PPM）. As such, we focus especially on ways actors define or enact projects 4 and make sense of how to manage the sum of the projects. Drawing on this perspective, we account for findings that suggest why companie

13、s that do engage in PPM still experience problems.2. Project portfolio theoryThis paper draws on Archer and Ghasemzadehs 5, p.208 definition of project portfolios as a group of projects that are carried out under the sponsorship and/or management of a particular organization. Henceforth, we define P

14、PM as the managerial activities that relate to （1） the initial screening, selection and prioritisation of project proposals,（2） the concurrent reprioritisation of projects in the portfolio,（3） the allocation and reallocation of resources to projects according to priority. For quite some time researc

15、hers have suggested that low completion rates for new product development （NPD） projects and new product failure relate to resource deficiencies in key areas 6,7. Furthermore, while a host of researchers 810 have focused on the dimension of PPM that concerns processes relating to selection of projec

16、ts to be included in the portfolio, research e.g. 11 also increasingly focuses on the day-today management of the project portfolio.3. MethodologyOver a period of two years, we did empirical research on how companies manage their entire range of projects, e.g. renewal projects, strategic projects, I

17、T projects, departmentally specific projects, and production based projects. In relation to the selection of companies to be included in the empirical study, a key criterion was that the study should cover a wide variety of industries. As a result, the empirical study covers 30 companies from indust

18、ries as diverse as, e.g. mobile telephone communications, finances, energy, pharmaceuticals, toys, software, and foods. However, due to the fact that we were looking for companies, where the amount of on-going projects suggested they were engaged in PPM, the study is biased towards larger companies

19、as well as companies that define at least a substantial part of their activities as projects. The degree to which the companies participated in the study varies. Hence, half of the companies are labelled inner circle companies due to the fact that we drew extensively on these 15 companies. For examp

20、le, in these companies more interviews were conducted at various points in time and at various organizational levels. Hence, a longitudinal perspective characterizes the involvement of these companies. The remaining half of the companies are labelled outer circle companies because their participatio

21、n in the study has included fewer top-management interviews, the purpose of which was to gain insight into ways in which （top） management defines the content of their project portfolios and manages them.4. Managerial implicationsA key finding is that the gap between required and available resources

22、is very much attributable to the existence of a host of smaller projects that never become part of enacted project portfolios. Thus, at an aggregated level, the empirical study suggests smaller, un-enacted projects qualify as resources crunchers in so far they are not considered to be a part of enac

23、ted project portfolios. In order to overcome this crunch in resources, two solutions seem obvious:（1） Enacting more, i.e. having PPM embrace all projects.（2） Allocating more resources to a pool of loosely-controlled resources for the un-enacted projects to draw on.5. Research implicationsThe empiric

24、al study elaborates on the significant shortage of resources devoted to NPD that Cooper and Edgett argue is the fundamental problem that plagues most firms product development efforts. Our work especially suggests that the shortage of resources devoted to enacted projects is not a problem that prima

25、rily arises in relation to top managements PPM. On the contrary, in-good-faith top management dedicates resources to enacted projects on the basis of sound PPM. However, what top managers do not do is take into account the host of smaller projects that individuals initiate and more importantly top m

26、anagers ignore （or at least heavily under-estimate） the amount of resources that these smaller projects tie up. Hence, we argue that especially the crunch in resources may be attributable to the un-enacted competition for resources that smaller projects subject enacted projects to. Consequently, the

27、 key contribution of our empirical work to research is that it emphasises that if we wish to study PPM （and especially if we wish to relate PPM to project performance）, we might be better off taking into account the entire range of projects that actual （not enacted） portfolios are comprised of. Thus

28、, if we as researchers only enact the projects that are neatly listed by top management, then our research will neglect the host of projects that are not subject to PPM, projects that nonetheless take up valuable, and scarce, resources. The fact that the empirical study includes interviews with mana

29、gers, i.e. those who do PPM, and interviews with personnel at lower organisational levels, i.e. those whose work is subject to PPM, is the reason why we were able to identify un-enacted projects. Thus, researchers interested in PPM should be careful not to rely too heavily on a management perspectiv

30、e.6. Conclusion and limitationsThe main conclusion is that as long as some projects are un-enacted, companies may experience a drain on resources that reduces the time and resources actually devoted to projects subject to PPM. Hence, each individual company should decide whether or not all projects

31、should be part of PPM and if the end result of such a decision is not to make comprehensive project lists （i.e. lists that include all minor projects）, then management should decide how many resources should be set aside for the plethora of small projects that do not appear on the project list. One

32、way in which the crunch in resources can be reduced is by ensuring that smaller projects do not take up a critical portion of the resources that are officially set aside for the completion of projects subject to PPM. However, due to the exploratory nature of the study accounted for in this paper, our findings relate far more to what companies actually do （positive theory in Hunts terms）, rather than to what they ought to do （normative theory in Hunts terms）. Although generating positive theory is