Toward Enterprise Approach for Project Portfolio Risk Management

Extant literature suggests that organizations struggle with risk evaluation as part of their project portfolio selection. The lack of intentional intervention on the part of portfolio leadership, risk management processes, and practices executed by individual projects may not support optimal risk management at the portfolio level. As a result, portfolio managers are tasked with the identification of common risks and opportunities across projects and are required to respond with strategies that are beyond the scope of a project manager's authority. To address the problem, this study identifies the gaps in the extant literature in portfolio approaches to project risk management, recommends techniques for managing common project risks collectively at the portfolio level, and emphasizes the role of the organization in fostering effective risk management at the project level, particularly in the realm of data governance.