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Modern, industry standard cloud-based project-portfolio management (PPM) tools are most commonly implemented to maximize business value. Understanding the transition from traditional to modern PPM software, the opportunities for optimization, and the tools’ qualitative and quantitative business value is vital so that organizations can streamline communication, better manage resources, and capture the value stream to enhance the connection between project selection and portfolio strategy. This allows for faster response time and portfolio decisions by innovative, cost-effective collaboration solutions, winning the organization that implements such tools the competitive edge.
As modern demands increase, so does the need for competitive productivity. Between 2020 and 2021, cloud services expenditures increased 18.4% due to market competition and the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic (Costello & Rimol, 2020). Gartner’s “Market Guide for Adaptive Project Management and Reporting” states that by 2024, 50% of all PPM leaders will use integrated tools such as cloud computing and collaboration (Stang, et al., 2020), and cloud spending on such tools will make up 14.2% of the IT spending market (Costello & Rimol, 2020).
However, increasingly complex requirements of project and portfolio managers make it difficult for individuals to manage the minutiae across multiple teams and systems while constantly adapting to increasing challenges simultaneously - e.g. the resource limitations brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic (Chereddy & Cleveland, 2021). The general business problem is that the market is saturated with many classes of cloud-based project-portfolio management (PPM) tools, making the seemingly simple task of selecting which tool to use unnecessarily convoluted. The specific business problem is that there is no existing framework for organizations to use to diagnose their needs and how to ultimately select which tool is most appropriate for the organization's competitive edge. The lack of such a model is likely to lead to cloud decisions based not on data, but on subjectivity.
The available literature on cloud-based tools is focused on what features they provide, but very little on how to diagnose an organization’s specific needs and allow project and portfolio managers the ability to select a tool successfully from dozens available on the market (Marion & Fixson, 2021). There is a clear lack of research on models to solve this issue, coupled with a lack of understanding of how to create a model applicable to a host of organizations. To address such gaps, the authors examined the case at an airline manufacturing company’s financial department, which wanted to select the right tool to allow its staff to leverage the features, benefits, and value of such tools, then use them to further strategize their organizational endeavors. Through this, the authors created a theoretical framework for tool selection which was then practically applied to the case study at hand.
The rest of the research paper is structured as follows. First, a literature review is performed, which centered around project and portfolio management, defining cloud-based PPM tools, and understanding their benefits, costs, risks, and business value. This is followed by an examination of research methodology and the application of a MoSCoW analysis. The paper concludes with a review of the results, limitations, and future research recommendations. The ultimate contribution to the research community is a validated framework that not only solves a gap in the literature, but also a clear lack of practical solutions for such a problem.