The nice folks at getabstract like Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects. Some of the takeaways they highlight are:

• Project portfolio management helps you finish your software projects on schedule.
• You must understand your mission to make choices about prioritizing software projects.
• Managers must select which projects to undertake and which to avoid.
• Create a visual overview of all current and upcoming projects to depict who will work on them and when.
• Some managers dislike project portfolio management because it prevents them from shifting developers between assignments. This is, in fact, a primary benefit.
• Project portfolio management aligns your team’s work objectives with your organization’s strategic objectives.
• Project portfolio management’s central truth: You can do all your software projects – but you can’t do them all at once.

You don’t have to read just the abstract. You can read the entire book. Buy it from the Prags in both the ebook (many forms) and/or print as a holiday present to yourself so you can start the new year right.

Or, if you are still a print-only reader, and want to buy it from Amazon, that works too.

But, if you are still trying to plug people into projects part-time, or if you are still trying to figure out how to get it “all” done, stop. You can’t. You need to engage your peers into having those difficult discussions about what you can commit to for now, what you can’t commit to for now, and what projects you will never commit to.

Welcome to the project portfolio!