Project and Portfolio Management (PPM) is a process that centrally manages all projects for organisation combinedly. However, it is important to understand the role of a project as well as portfolio separately from the management perspective. A project is a temporary endeavor that has started as well as end and has a specific purpose of accomplishing. Whereas, a portfolio is an umbrella term under which all the organisation projects are managed collectively. Besides, the portfolio looks after projects that could meet a company’s main strategic objectives, including inside firms, a division, or even a small department of that particular business. The companies aim to make their business process better after making useful project suggestions. Hence, the portfolio opens that possibility so that the right project is selected for a competitive advantage.

Therefore, PPM is a structured approach that manages a portfolio of projects based on criteria including business objectives, their optimal business value, risk involvement, resource availability, identification of best projects, authority, allocation of highly qualified project managers, monitoring and control (Bonnie, 2018). Furthermore, the project manager looks after assigned project execution under the portfolio management approach; while, the portfolio manager looks after all organisation projects for making business objective accomplishments.

Project and Portfolio management is essential for organisations if they want to succeed. As per Project Management Institute research, PPM is useful for companies so that they could reduce differences for strategies as well as the implementation process while seeking a new project. For example, whenever a firm tries to select a project, it must produce a valid result for them to progress. If a project does not bring any development for business, it not only reduces time but resources, investments, and cash flow. PPM will ensure a portfolio manager to choose a wise project, could return for investments, save time as well as resources followed by 100 percent results on business objectives fulfillment. Thus, not only project management is essential; however, management of different projects is a crucial concern for the organisation to concentrate respectively.

In addition, Project and Portfolio Management is essential to reduce business problems altogether. A company wants to achieve a place in the market due to competition on the same product or service. The biggest issue is that organisations take more than one project with no initial investments. As a result, management teams cannot work on multiple projects simultaneously with an extra employee working hours or cutting corners during the project execution process. This concern makes the company suffers from losses due to the selection of wrong association producing delays, cost overruns, and poor-quality results (Oltmann, 2008). The key to reducing such issues includes PPM solutions that can make effective project decisions as well as works as a connection for strategic planning and its effective execution (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework for Project and Portfolio Management Adopted from (Oltmann, 2008)

The purpose of the report is to assess the project and portfolio management processes for organisation Tesco plc. The company is a British multinational firm that works as groceries and merchandise retailers situated at headquarters in Welwyn Garden city, Hertfordshire, England, United Kingdom. This report covers all aspects of the PPM framework in context to Tesco plc, which will describe how portfolio management is a practical approach for an organisation providing services and products for society. Furthermore, the report offers company overview, PPM principles, Project Management strategies, project manager competencies, risk assessment followed by mitigation, team management skills, and team management skills.

Organisation Overview

The organisation Tesco plc is a British orientation firm that produces as a retailer for groceries and general stores situated with main headquarters in Welwyn Garden city, Hertfordshire, England, UK. Furthermore, Jack Cohen was the founder of this company in the year 1919, followed by the opening of the first store in 1931 at Burnt Oak, Barnet, and propagated as a massive retailer in the 1940s (Tesco PLC, 2019). Also, the company has launched several products, including clothing, household goods, internet grocery retailing, furniture, electronics, toys, and books for operation expansion towards 11 countries. Additionally, Tesco plc also offers shop portfolios in several ways, for example, Tesco petrol stations, Tesco Extra, Tesco Superstore, Tesco Express, Tesco Metro, one shop, Tesco Dotcom only, and Dobbies in-total stores are 3,787. While, some of Tesco subsidiaries offers other services including financial (Tesco Bank), telecom (Tesco mobile) and Tesco technical support. Therefore, with huge expansion, the revenue for the company for 2019 is recorded as 11.2 percent with an increment from £57.5bn to £63.9bn since 2018 (Tesco PLC, 2019).

Organisational Structure

The organizational structure follows a hierarchal approach with three principal divisions, including top, mediate, and basic level due to being involved and large-scale company with the diversification of products and services. One of the benefits for Tesco plc structure is predefined roles and responsibilities inside the hieratical structure to follow so that multinational retail store management is effectively possible without any issues such as confusion and mismanagement (Widhiastuti, 2013). PPM structured approach is implemented in the mediate level, where functional control for each company’s process is performed. Furthermore, here new projects, their portfolios are kept in one single place to look for management and strategic planning processes.

Figure 2: Tesco PlC Hierarchal structure Adopted from (Own illustration)

Tesco PLC is a company that has committed relationships for building shareholders’ values with consumers as well as society. In addition, to support this notion, organization follows a strict customer-focused strategy for fulfilling the company’s business strategies. The strategic planning includes following principles that adhere and support the business initiatives, respectively, such as money value, services for consumers, consumer loyalty, diversification products, and options for shops with separate perspectives.

Projects Overview

There are several projects which are undertaken by Tesco PLC under their project management department at a mediate level, as shown in the above diagram. The purpose of the company is to offer shareholder value with diversification as well as involvement with consumers for better services and productivity. For the past 18 years, many projects and initiatives are undertaken, which are explored below with a timeline framework.

2000-2009

In the year 2000, after introduction to the world wide web, Tesco has developed their online application for consumers’ visits in larger number.

It was followed by diversification towards other products, including range of clothing in year 2001 with new brand endorsement Florence & Fred.

Another diversification included Tesco Mobile a joint venture with O2 across UK consumers with features like pay as company go service, no contract sim, monthly deals as well as exclusive online and offline shops in year 2003 (Our history, 2020).

In the year 2009, company relaunched Clubcard initiative for consumers through which after scanning on purchased products with 1-euro spending turns into rewarded as 2 Clubcard points (Our history, 2020). Hence, such huge change with smartphone mobile application as new projects were launched by organizations under PPM framework for reaching competitive advantage over other retailers.

2010-2019

In the year 2012, Tesco PLC started new project such as virtual store so that consumers could buy product by scanning QR code for home delivery at subway stations in South Korea followed by UK. Furthermore, display of products has daily grocery items such as milk and apples, pet food and stationery displayed at screen doors of subway station from which consumer can scan and request an item through Homeplus app (Tesco opens world’s first virtual store | Tesco | Archello, 2012).

At the same time, company also introduced FareShare and the Trussel Trust on the UK’s biggest food collection project so that consumers were able to donate for long life food to charity and meeting vulnerable people with requirements. In addition, Tesco Food Collection project had included customer donations, food donation permanent points as well as a 20 percent top up from Tesco donations that came from other people. In the year 2015, next project named Bags of Help scheme was launched by company so that 5 euros purchases for bag with create funds to improve green space for local community support in place including England, Scotland and Wales. Furthermore, after first year bag charge approximately 1.5 billion saved single used bags to take groceries. Also, 2018 year was extremely unique due to launch of another project introducing Jack’s to celebrate 100 years since Tesco came into existence. Jack’s is a new brand that introduced new stores so that customers could taste variety of food as well as in a reducing or lowest price possible with effective diversification.

In the year 2019, excessive packaging project was introduced to remove hard to recycle materials so that excessive wastage for food products could be controlled using four R method including remove, reduce, reduce and recycle (Tesco launches phase two of Remove, Reduce, Reuse & Recycle plan to suppliers, 2019). While, other project includes a solar power oriented green electricity project so that energy will be sourced for their stores from wind farms, solar farms and solar panels expertly.

Q1 Portfolio of Projects

From above project timeline, it is obvious that different projects grouped under a portfolio. Also known as “Portfolio of Projects” has provided Tesco PLC benefits over practical and strategic perspectives for having a sufficient growth as leading organization for supermarket and grocery business. The proposed portfolio for Tesco PLC organisation is ‘value creation for consumers’ as per their mission statement.

Benefits of Portfolio of Projects

There are five crucial benefits of Project Portfolio in context with Tesco PLC and their new project scenario which is implementation of green electricity project across stores once it is adopted. These includes:

Better Decision Making that leads to better business decisions for Tesco (Needs, 2018): In the growing competitive advantage age, decision making is one of positive impact for company to take. For making better decisions, company requires information and thus include visibility as a crucial aspect provided from Portfolio of projects. Also, portfolio determine strategic planning for taking better decision over new changes made by organization for their consumers.
Furthermore, if Tesco has complete visibility for working on past project metrics including a store type it will also provide predictions new project factors such as resource utilization. Portfolio of projects is a practical approach to make certain decisions over showcasing which projects are contributing to fulfill corporative objectives and evaluate total amount for exact resources to be utilized (Brook and Pagnanelli, 2014). In addition, possibility of effective decision making will also give Tesco PLC to understand will green electricity project is feasible or not. Therefore, PPM strategy offers decision making that leads to strategic planning for all possible projects, impact on other projects, re-allocation, repriotize, understand multiple scenarios as well as assessment for corporative objective contribution.
Reduce and control ability for avoiding exposure to the risks (Needs, 2018): Project Portfolio or Portfolio of projects will be helpful Tesco to avoid risk that could end green initiative taken by them in first place. A project has different types of hazards such as financial investments, lack of governance, lack of resources and no efforts from the senior executives (DeMeyer et al., 2013). Hence, for such as big project including solar and renewable energy source to stores shops require proper planning. Thus, financial risk control will help to perform cost benefit analysis on a project. It will also reduce possibility if project is weak to shutdown due to poor performance.
Furthermore, it is also necessary to understand if project does align with company’s mission and vision statement. Furthermore, governance risk is an event which occurs because project lacks a regulation and accountability framework. Thus, compliance in project lifecycle process of green energy project will offer risk control before it even happens effectively.
Increase Resources to their fullest: Portfolio of projects can showcase an effective vision for company which is obtaining sustainability and save electricity at stores. Project and Portfolio management framework will increase resource utilization possibility. For example, lack of resources, skill shortage, project cost as well as absolutely no workforce makes project less feasible and eradicate company assets (Needs, 2018). With the help of good capacity planning tool Tesco can decide how much cost, resources, and workforce is needed as input for resulting in maximizing resources prior project initiation. As different projects needed different inputs of resources, it will save company from going into losses by allocation of right resource for right work.
Hold an effective value to the Stakeholders: Stakeholders especially suppliers, consumers as well as internal or external will get great benefit over application of green energy sources. Some important Tesco stakeholders include business managers, project managers, financial analysts, executive teams, government bodies, consumers, employees, portfolio managers, and investors (Voinov and Bousquet, 2010). As a biggest supermarket store chain line in the UK, Tesco requires a fast strategy to build their competitive advantage in marketplace. However, research and development department take time which reduces effort and slow down whole process. An effective portfolio of projects will create a great value to save time and obtain something new to fulfill company’s corporate objective. With green electricity project Tesco aims to implement renewable energy source and contribute to environment. In addition, other project including excessive packaging R4 cycle will reduce hard to recycle product packaging issues organization is facing. The value will also offer irrelevant data issues and confusion over non-feasible projects that does not offer any return on investments.
Gain repetitive success by Portfolio of Projects: With the above Tesco project timeline, it is clear that projects do have a positive effect for everyone involved. In addition, value of PPM framework will offer an effective purpose to predict and repeat each project success. Tesco if use portfolio of project will receive a proper and strategic framework as well as technology infrastructure so that business objectives of seeking household item store a very important part of organisation. The companies gain repetitive success if they have best practices and project management methodologies as well as lesson learnt from previous initiatives respectively (Needs, 2018). This process will also have positive effect for company so that they could gather previous green energy initiatives for improvisation on current project operations. In this way, company will gain momentum to obtain consistency over past project predictions and effective execution over future projects.

Project and Portfolio Management Planning and Control Principles

To plan and control portfolio management lifecycle principles are implemented which is a continuous set of activities that a portfolio manager perform so that their PPM process becomes effective as well as successful. With the help of lifecycle framework robust change inside organisation is implemented so that end user or consumers stay connected with organisation (Eco Team, 2020). One of the projects implemented inside Tesco PLC was establishment of virtual store at South Korea subway station. With the help of lifecycle framework planning and control of project in UK as well as 11 countries could be implemented. There are three phases of the portfolio management lifecycle through which virtual store project is understood:

Planning: The first stage is where portfolio creation is planned to organize important projects.
Authorizing: The portfolio manager is appointed to authorize and supervise a portfolio of project.
Monitoring and Controlling: This phase control and monitor the portfolios that are implemented for company.

Furthermore, PMI offers three phases that are divided into two groups including aligning process group as well as monitoring and controlling process group to implement portfolio management principles effectively (Eco Team, 2020).

Aligning Process Group

Aligning Process Group has seven step principles for planning and control of making critical decisions for portfolio design process.

Identification of Projects: The first principle is to identify list of projects and opportunities which are required to consider for being part of an effective portfolio in the beginning. Therefore, purpose is to create a list of new project opportunities that will increase and improve company’s performance. A virtual store is considered effective project because it brought opportunities for digital business consumers.
Categorisation of Projects: The projects are grouped and classified to accomplish strategic goals and obtaining decision making with clear mind. Several groups are developed by company including regulatory compliance, operational efficiency, consumer target marketing, reducing risk issues so that projects are accomplished as per Tesco’s different purposes. Virtual stores come under marketing of products and services online as well as consumer’s convenience groups.
Evaluation: The projects are evaluated with help of data collection methods including qualitative and quantitative so that priorities for each project is defined. Hence, feasibility of virtual store will take place in this step.
Selection of Project: The project selection is a process that choose a certain project from portfolio through several parameters including organisation value, resource availability, human capital, finance, infrastructure as well as budgets (). Therefore, Tesco will ensure all parameters for making virtual store visible to consumers after assessment for budget and its initial return on investments.
Prioritization: The purpose of this process is project scoring and ranking as per groups. For example, a project for company is ranked under time period which could be short or long term as well as has impact for resources. There are several methods which are used such as ranking method, scoring model, and risk versus return profiles as well as mathematical Analytic Hierarchy Process technique.
Portfolio balancing: The portfolio balancing ranks priority of project under each category individually from which final portfolio selection takes place.
Authorization: The portfolio-based decisions will be introduced to all stakeholders involved including allocation of resources so that project is executed effectively without any constraints.

Monitoring and Controlling Process Group

Monitoring and controlling process group ensures that portfolio managers could implement change and adopt it without any issues. If some problems appear its management over certain project is extremely important to conduct (Eco Team, 2020).

Periodic reporting and review of Portfolio: To check if portfolio management lifecycle framework is successful or not, Tesco should review projects continuously after brief measurement through key performance metrics including cost, schedule, resources, communication, as well as meetings after few intervals with authorized portfolio managers. One of the basic benefits of this principle is to take charge and identify issues that affect projects negatively.
Strategic Change: Project Portfolio always gets changed due to new strategies, productivity management as well as macro-economic factors that requires monitoring and reporting feature is be available.

Figure 4: Project Portfolio Management Lifecycle Adopted from (Ciliberti, undated)

Project and Portfolio Management Techniques

There are several numbers of project and portfolio management techniques that Tesco PLC could use to identify which projects are kept in portfolio. Furthermore, this procedure establishes a proper planning and control system for presenting key information important to perform project portfolio management. One of the common approaches which Tesco could use it are checklists and project profiling that are simplest and most popular used project portfolio management techniques (Bayan and M Ahme, 2018). The purpose of such qualitative scoring systems helps provide overall score that is effective for ranking projects through return on investments probability for success.

In addition to qualitative methods, quantitative methods for identifying best project from portfolios are available. It is also known as benefit measurement method analyse what benefit a project will bring to the organisation (Li et al., 2015). There are several benefit measurement methods that PPM framework could use in context with Tesco PLC effectively.

Benefit/Cost Ratio: The purpose of this method is to measure ratio between cost of project and return value of project to the company. Furthermore, projects with higher benefit cost ratio will be given more importance as compared to others unless and until budget is not a constraint for them to implement and execute project delivery.
Economic Value Added: The total net profit of a project that results in full return on capital in money is known as economic value added respectively.
Scoring Model: The scoring model is similar to checklist however portfolio manager will mark the project through importance and priority index for selection process.
Payback Period: This method calculates how much time it will take for recovering and paybacks from the invested cost over a certain project in certain time.
Net Present Value: NPV identifies the major difference between project’s current cash inflow and outflow and if NPV is higher than it will be selected for certain project.
Opportunity: The lowest opportunity for a project to exist is given importance to accomplish and implement it inside organisations with full assessment.

Project Management Strategies and Approaches

Financial planning

Financial Planning is a process in which allocation of resources are assessed throughout the project start and end. In addition, financial planning are different plans including total budget of project, work breakdown structure for dividing and allocation a project module, as well as work packages (Castro et al., 2019). In addition, financial planning helps to assess expenditure through expenditure plans such as rate of expenditure, investment funds from sponsorships, capital investments, profit plans, as well as budget calculation at each point of project developments. Henceforth, project managers propose a budget that is negotiated among investors as well as company followed by agreements that fix a total project budget. Therefore, Tesco introduces financial planning plans so that they could assess and understand how much a project budget will cost in advance.

IPR Principles and Regulations

IPR stands for Intellectual property rights which are rights provided to an individual for their creations with exclusive authority and no other could copy or paste. In context with project portfolio, project ideas are under project managers and portfolio manager rights as well as organisation. Therefore, IPR principles and regulations are implemented for each organisations contribution over specific project. Some important principles include patents, copyright, industrial design rights, plant variety rights, trademarks, and passing off (Anderson and Gallini, 2019). Thus, Tesco PLC will require to follow IPR principles with effective mechanism for their new projects under portfolio.

Patents: The purpose of patents is to protect new inventions, consist of inventive step as well as could be introduced as industrial application capability. Therefore, Tesco will require to make patent by applying to the intellectual property office prior to introduction for legalizing it.
Design Rights: Design is included in company for a product and its shape, texture, color, materials used as well as contours. Thus, protection for design rights will have unregistered and registered design rights as well as copyright.
Unregistered Design Rights: It protects recorded design by providing design is correct and not copy or pasted from other companies in past 15 years.
Registered Design Rights: The principles support protection for product’s design for two as well as three dimensional items with intellectual property office registration process.
Copyright: Copyright will protect organisation’s work for original literacy, sounds and recordings as well as published editions. It is defined as a regulation that stops others for remaking a individual’s work without seeking their permission.
Trademarks: The trademark will offer marks for goods and services in the UK under certain marking graphic and symbol for possibility of using it from other competitors.
Passing Off: In this regulation, protection from people taking advantage of some other company is offered including goodwill for service reputation as well as protection against consequential damage.

Q2: Recommendations of Portfolio Manager

Techniques for planning and scheduling Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a process which follows step by step identification, analysis and project risk response to control any risk for projects. A portfolio manager should adopt risk assessment mechanism while choosing projects for their portfolio.

Figure 5: Risk Assessment Process Model Adopted from (Snijders et al., 2013)

Following risk assessment techniques are used by company for checking any risks associated with a new project.

Root Cause Analysis:
SWOT Analysis: A swot analysis identifies strength, weakness, opportunities and threat associated with project internally and externally (Westland, 2019). It is effective mechanism for understanding what is lacking in a project and what is not.
Risk Register: A risk register evaluates all the risks associated with single project in form of register with factors including possibility, rating, response plan as well as mitigation strategies (Westland, 2019).
Probability and impact matrix: A matrix identify probability of project including higher, lower, as well as impact on the company.

Team management Skills to achieve project success criteria

To achieve project success criteria and stakeholder priorities following team management skills are mandatory.

Leadership: leadership is a trait which control a project management team with guidance and utmost responsibility (Aston, 2020). If team members suffers from any issue they could ask effective leader to help them in context with the the project.
Communication: An open communication mechanism is helpful so that all stakeholders involved has an idea for their roles and responsibilities through channels like the the message, face-to-face as well as video conferencing.
Planning: Project planning is important aspect that decide cost, budget and schedule for completion of project objectives (Aston, 2020).
Time Management: Time and schedule for delivering project should be clear since beginning. A project is successful if it follows a start and end with effective planning principles.
Risk Management: A risk is temporary event which could impact project negatively if not considered (Aston, 2020). Risk management and response plan are helpful to understand if there are any issues over the project.
Negotiation: Negotiations skills are influencing for sponsors and investors to convince financial statements for the project and cash flow with result in successful project delivery.
Subject Expertise: The project manager must have the subject knowledge expertise they are working on effectively.

Q3: Presentation for Project Managers

References

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Project and Portfolio Management

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Introduction