As discussed in the article, Portfolio Management is a very important for any corporation to “effectively invest its R&D and new product resources.” It is a very important part of the management process. I also believe that portfolio management can be an important facet to any business whether just starting out, or reaching the peak of its lifetime.
As Robert Cooper and Scott Edgett put it, there are four goals in portfolio management that can help achieve goals. Value Maximization, Balance, Strategic Direction, and Right Number of Products. I believe the most important goal for a portfolio to have is balance. David Johnson, a portfolio manager at Cane Bay Partners believes that a successful portfolio “involves taking the almost endless supply of information available and using it to produce stellar results for your clients.” This to me spells out balance. Information is one of the only ways to know what projects are truly in the portfolio, by knowing what’s in a portfolio a manager has better control over the portfolio, and a better way to communicate that to clients, who they are supposed to be earning equity for.
After understanding goals and using them as tools, it’s important to understand how to utilize them. The article recommends for larger companies, using a stage gate model to help prioritize and sift through projects. This would make sense, because larger companies have a greater inflow of projects coming to them for considerations for their portfolio. The stage-gate model puts projects through separate stages where the project will be re-evaluated and then put to a test or “gate” to make sure that it is a worthy product. The article recommends using this process in two ways.