Companies are either international by nature, either their workforce is, or business dynamics and agile optimization create an extended web making it international. This obliges managers to gear up for the needs of this evolving DNA. This is especially the case in strategy critical project portfolio contexts focusing on organizational change, process transformation, or roll-out of headquarter-driven products/services. This chapter will address the required hard and soft assets: integrating the cultural essence and maturity of the ecosystem, combining experience with a pragmatic approach, and being dedicated to continuous shaping of collaborations. Additional focus will be set on managing in the digital age. To give more depth to the tangible value, different real-life cases will be integrated. Together, the theoretical insights and the empirical examples will offer a big picture view that will benefit the management of hybrid portfolios in geographically blended environments.
TopProject Management: Foundational Concepts
Project management methodologies like PMBOK and Prince 2 refer to a project as a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service based on an agreed upon business case, and with a limited duration (Office of Government Commerce, 2010; Project Management Institute, 2013).
In agile, the definition of a project follows the same idea, as having a start and end date, focused on delivering a product and the likes. Project management as such, however, is organized differently. In some cases, the responsibility is shared between several persons.
From a macro perspective, however, the differences between agile and Waterfall driven programs are negligible. In the further discussion on project matters, the PPM definitions illustrated in Table 1 will therefore be used (Janssens, 2017).