Has anyone used the standard project plan template to manage a portfolio of projects?

All,

I am trying to setup the standard project plan template and turn that into a portfolio management template. Instead of the project name, it is the Project Manager - the portfolio owner. Instead of the project phases, I have project names. The projects are then broken down by phase (4 phases - initiate, plan, execute, close-out) and the phases have 1-5 tasks each. The % complete do not seem to be rolling up correctly and I am wondering if I need to better define the parent/child relationships.

You may be wondering why I wouldn't just use a project template for each project and then roll it up into a portfolio. We have over 60 project managers and each manager has 10-20 projects. We wanted to give each project manager a single sheet to provide high level status of their projects and then roll up the manager's individual sheets into a portfolio summary by region, etc...

Thanks for your help.

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Andrée Starå

Hi @TKLewandowski

I hope you're well and safe!

Have you explored using separate sheets and then using a Report to collect them together?

Would that work/help?

I hope that helps!

Be safe, and have a fantastic week!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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TKLewandowski

Thanks for responding, Andree.

Yes, I can have them manage their individual projects on separate sheets, but the preference is one sheet per project manager.

Andrée Starå

@TKLewandowski

What about using the Report to simulate it being in one sheet?

TKLewandowski

Again, thanks. I am trying to give each PM one sheet to manage their 15-20 projects. Asking the PMs to update their 15-20 projects in separate sheets is not an option.

Andrée Starå

@TKLewandowski

You're more than welcome!

To clarify. They would still have one sheet showing all the projects, but it would be a Report instead.

Make sense? I just wanted to make it clear how it works.

To answer the question, yes, I've done that multiple times in my client solutions, and at the moment, I'm doing it for a Cabinet Maker where they need to have all projects in one sheet so they can use dependencies and similar between them.

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LouCHarms

I am struggling with this too. Our department manages a lot of short projects and setting up a new sheet with every initiation is really cumbersome (I've already tried).

When I try to pull all of it into a report then there are difficulties adding new projects. And honestly, I think I would be managing what gets added every single day.

KHoward

@TKLewandowski, What did you end of doing? I am struggling we a similar challenge. I am trying to decide whether to use the Project Management Office templates or the Project Plan template. I don't want the project managers to have to have a sheet for each project and I don't need the work intake work approval process that's with the Project Management Office templates. However, I don't know if the project plan template can work for Portfolio Management based on the challenges you are see.

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