Balancing projects with society and the environment: A project, programme and portfolio approach

Issues such as global climate change, poverty & inequity, and the unsustainable use of resources are driving organisations to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into strategy and operations. Recently project management has drawn criticism of lacking sufficient governance to respond to such issues and the local interpretation and lessons learned have had little success in addressing this. Whilst sustainability principles can be actively influenced, encouraged and monitored through project portfolio programme and project management, there are often problems with translating vision and strategy into project practice. Here we suggest that portfolio and programme management presents an opportunity to integrate visionary and strategic sustainability with operational sustainability. Moreover a programme and portfolio approach can lead to enhanced opportunity to share sustainability practice between projects Therefore sustainability has to be an integrated part of Portfolio, Programme and Project processes to support and achieve the objectives of an organisation. Here the governance of organisational practice and the triple bottom line interlinks the processes to support the operational strategy of an organisation