This paper describes on how project councils, like the Corporate Project Administration

Group (CPAG) at Blue Cross/Blue Shield supports to achieve organizations long term success

and how Project-Portfolio-Management as a tool can contribute to it.

The purpose of Project Portfolio Management is to ensure that project prioritization aligns

with the organization's strategic objective. The concept of selecting and managing a set of

projects should be based on a standardized methodology to ensure effective stewardship of

resources and alignment with strategic goals (Swanson, 2011)

Given the limitations of resources, time, budget and people, PPM allows to determine which

project is the right one to implement right now. However, no single project defines an

organization future success, but the set of projects does (Wheelwright et. al., 1992). Thus,

PPM has to align the set of project that meets organization strategies.

The first step at PPM is to establish a project council, like Blue Cross/Blues Shield (BC/BS)

have done it with the Corporate Project Administration Group (CAPG).

The council’s task is among other to communicate strategies internally between executive

management and project management offices, to prioritize and focus on project that create

value and aligns to the management´s strategic goal and objectives as well optimize resource

capacity.

CAPG is charged with the responsibility for the key decisions that affect the project portfolio

and is centered below senior management.

A project council should involve a wide range of participants across the organization,

however it should not be thrusted fully into the hands of a chief project officer, the

responsible person for the project management office, as it should bridge between traditional

operations management and project management (Levine, 2005).

Once projects are selected based on profitability, weighted factor scoring model or any other

numeric or non-numeric to select projects that aligns the firm strategy and goals uses firm´s

resources effectively, the project council has to aggregate projects into categories.

In accordance to Wheelwright et al. (1992) projects can be grouped into following categories:

 Derivative projects are projects that range from range cost-reduction, incremental

product or quality changes to incremental process changes.

 Platform projects are not involving disruptive changes like breakthrough changes,

however platform projects are characterized by a better-system solution for customers.

 Breakthrough projects are involving significant project and process changes that

involves revolutionary new technologies.

 Research and development projects are endeavors to create know-how and know-

why of new material and technologies and acquired knowledge may be deployed for

developing new products or processes.

The time frame and resources needed differs for the different project categories. As derivative

projects are using up the least resources, management involvement is minimal (Wheelwright

et al., 1992) Breakthrough projects and research development projects are high-risk project

management involvement and monitoring should be greater. For this reason, CPAG will be

not monitor all projects as not all kind of projects require a high degree of monitoring and

management involvement.

Monitoring projects involves a high degree of work effort and depending on risk and potential

benefit of projects, it is not efficient to monitor all project categories with the same accuracy.

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Tactical projects are short term and oriented toward smaller steps/milestones that aids

organizations strategical goal. Whereas strategic projects involve projects in achieving the

strategy of an organization in long term. Strategical and tactical projects have to be in-line

with one another to achieve long term success (Clearpoint Strategy, 2019).

As tactical projects and strategic projects interact with each other CPAG should only

terminate tactical projects when they are not in-line with the long-term vision. A strategy

without tactics won´t be executed as resources are limited, CPAG task is to include in the

project portfolio projects that supports the long-term-vision.

As tactical projects are developed across organization department´s it is essential everyone

understands organization strategy.

Successful PPM requires that the results and reasons for project selection, project cancellation

and project-postponement are well documented. CPAG supports project proposer, senior

management and projects manager as a mediator, that balances interpersonal and

interdepartmental competition to improve BC/BS´s strategic goals.

As CPAG reinforce the articulation between senior management and project management and

enhance the understandings of strategic goal it will substantially contribute in achieving

BC/BS´s strategic goals.

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Refrences:
Clearpoint Strategy (2019, July 1). Strategy Vs. Tactics: The Main Difference & How to
Track Progress Of Both. Retrieved from https://www.clearpointstrategy.com/strategy-vs-
tactics/

Levine, H. A. (2005). Project portfolio management: a practical guide to selecting projects,

managing portfolios, and maximizing benefits. John Wiley & Sons.

Meredith, J. R., Mantel Jr, S. J., & Shafer, S. M. (2017). Project management: a managerial
approach. John Wiley & Sons.

Swanson, S. A. (2011). ALL THINGS CONSIDERED It's time for executives to break out of
the ROI stranglehold and look beyond the bottom line when picking projects. PM Network,
25(2), 36.

Wheelwright, S. C., & Clark, K. B. (1992). Creating project plans to focus product
development (pp. 70-82). Harvard Business School Pub..