Project portfolio control and portfolio management performance in different contexts

A project team's performance is both directly influenced by the project manager's control techniques and overtly shaped by a variety of contextual factors, including organizational dynamics and industry regulations. This article examines the nature of--and the relationship between--project portfolio control techniques and portfolio management performance, looking at how this relationship is determined by the situational idiosyncrasies of internal and external dynamics--such as industry, governance, and geography--and from these, developing a model for controlling project portfolios. In doing so, it defines the concept of a project portfolio and overviews the literature on four lines of research involving project portfolio management, proposing five hypotheses that the authors' used to structure their Web-based survey of 136 international high-performing portfolio professionals, a survey investigating portfolio management best practices.