Mining company from Australia operates as a decentralized organization where individual sites, business units, IT teams, and operational groups have significant autonomy.
That model works well operationally, but it creates a challenge for portfolio management.
The organization did not have a single global IT portfolio. Projects could belong to different organizational areas, use different prioritization criteria, and still depend heavily on one another. An IT initiative, for example, could be a critical dependency for a much larger business or mining project managed in another portfolio.
Separating those portfolios into independent systems would remove exactly the visibility the company was trying to create.
Different portfolios also needed to retain their own management logic. IT might prioritize throughput or architectural importance, while another portfolio might prioritize cost, business value, or delivery against a long-term investment plan.
On top of that, management needed standardized project status reporting, historical visibility, and consolidated portfolio reporting.
The company implemented PPM Express as a shared portfolio layer across the organization.
Projects from different business areas were managed within the same environment. Portfolios stayed operationally distinct but still rolled up into a common enterprise view.
The company used different processes, layouts, views, custom fields, and prioritization models to accommodate the requirements of different portfolios. Portfolio-specific information could be presented to the relevant users without requiring separate PPM platforms.
Roadmaps and cross-project dependencies provided visibility between portfolios. The organization could now see when an IT milestone, infrastructure activity, or other project deliverable affected a project managed elsewhere in the business.
Custom project fields and prioritization logic replaced spreadsheet-based scoring approaches, while Power BI and PPM Express reporting provided consistent management views.
Monthly status information, RYG indicators, project history, risks, issues, milestones, and other governance information became part of a persistent project record rather than a collection of disconnected spreadsheets and presentations.
The company established a single source of portfolio visibility while preserving the autonomy of individual business areas.
Portfolio managers could manage projects according to the criteria relevant to their own organization while leadership gained visibility across portfolio boundaries.
Dependencies that previously required manual coordination became visible within the portfolio environment. Projects could be evaluated within their local context while still contributing to enterprise-level reporting.
The portfolio operating model worked with the company's decentralized structure instead of trying to eliminate it. PPM Express provided a common management layer across different project types, methodologies, and business units, and no portfolio had to operate identically to the others.
Reviewed by PPM Express in August 2026.
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