Empowering project portfolio managers: How management involvement impacts project portfolio management performance

Along with the increasing diffusion of project portfolio management a new managerial role evolves: the project portfolio manager. This new role is supposed to be pivotal in planning and controlling complex project landscapes more effectively and more efficiently, in implementing project portfolio management practices as a management innovation, and in coping with traditional conflicts between line and project managers in matrix organizations. However, by empowering project portfolio managers and giving their role more clarity and significance, the complex power balance between senior managers, line managers, and project managers also has to change. These changes are assumed to lead to new tensions between traditional key players and the new role which will reduce the overall project portfolio performance. This paper uses the new role of the project portfolio manager and its interplay with line and senior management to explain how management involvement can positively and negatively impact project portfolio success at the same time. It therefore offers practitioners an initial point for designing organizational governance structures and job descriptions to increase the portfolio management performance while implementing or reconfiguring the formal role definition of involved managers. For scholars this article paves the way for an empirical study on the impact of power re-distribution in project (portfolio) management.