Portfolio - Collection of programs which may or may not be related. They are all part of an organization goals / plans. An organisation maintains a portfolio of all the programs that it has undertaken in order to meet their strategic business goals. The portfolio handles the governance of the project lifecycle, maintains the programs standards, a document repository for all the paper-work generated by the programs and any portfolio management tools.
Program - Group of related projects that are grouped together. Doing them together provides a benefit to the organization (or for whatever reason, to the organization, it just makes sense). Programs are used to categorize works to smaller set of related projects. These projects may be done sequentially or parallel.
Project - A temporary enterprise that will produce a deliverable, service or result. Projects are how the new work in a organization gets done. Projects can be as complex as writing a new software as Operating System, building a high-rise office building at down town metroplex or as simple as finding an answer to a question or making a spaghetti dinner to your family.
When organization combine Portfolio, Program and Project management under one organization umbrella, this is call
Organizational Project Management (
OPM).
OPM is the highest level of project management and it provides a systematic management approach to projects, programmes and portfolios to achieve organization overall strategic goal.
Portfolio Management, Project Management and Project Management are different and may require separate skillsets and authority roles. Defining them may be a little complicated as these terms and roles may mean different things in different industries. Regardless of what these terms are called in any industry, they all use the fundamental discipline of project management as a way to successfully meet their business needs and objectives.
