P.T. Barnum once said, "Without promotion, something terrible happens … nothing!"
Although my mother always counseled me not to toot my own horn, if you are neither seen nor heard, no one knows you are there. Portfolio management provides organizations doing project based work with incredible opportunities to increase efficiencies and profitability across the enterprise. However, if PPM awareness at the executive level is lacking, those opportunities will be lost.
Effective work management methodologies that may have originally been developed for IT carry the potential to improve work processes throughout the organization. Start by increasing communication and improving awareness on the executive level, beyond the CIO. The key is to identify the primary issues and top priorities among stakeholders and demonstrate how PPM can address them. Project decision makers who can demonstrate the ability to reduce costs, save money by eliminating duplication, or increase efficiency by better resource utilization should "market" these abilities to their counterparts throughout the organization.
Business leaders are always looking for ways to effectively implement and validate that 
corporate strategy is executed by the workforce. A well-functioning project and portfolio management methodology can provide the foundation to effectively accomplish this. As businesses grapple with profitability, and in some cases even viability, in the current economic climate, delivering projects that align with corporate objectives and enable business growth have become critically important to executives.
CIOs, PMOs, and other project leaders have an opportunity to directly impact the profits of their organizations. For many, all that is lacking is a little "self promotion."
Does your executive staff know of your PMO successes? Is the contribution your project teams make to the profitability of the organization obvious—or should you be tooting your own horn?
As business leaders look into the next year, now is a good time to report on your successes and offer suggestions as to how project management practices can contribute to efficiencies in other areas within the organization.
