Management of interdependency in project portfolio

Project management has evolved in recent decades. Project portfolio management, together with multi project management, is an emerging area in the project management field in practice, and correspondingly in academic research and forums. In multi project management, projects cannot be handled isolated from each other, as they often have interdependencies that have to be taken into account. If the interdependencies between projects are evaluated during the selection process, the success rate of the project portfolio is increased. Interdependencies can be human resources, technological, and/or market based. Despite of the fact that interdependency as a phenomenon has roots in the 1960s and is related to famous management theories, it has not been much studied, although in practice most companies use it to great extent. There exists some research on interdependency, but prior publications have not emphasized the phenomenon per se, because a practical orientation practitioner techniques prevails in the literature. This research applies the method triangulation, electronic surveys and multiple case study. The research concentrates on small to large companies in Estonia and Finland, mainly in construction, engineering, ICT, and machinery industries. The literature review reveals that interdependencies are deeply involved in R&D and innovation. Survey analysis shows that companies are aware of interdependency issues in general, but they i have lack of detailed knowledge to use it thoroughly. Empirical evidence also indicates that interdependency techniques influence the success rate and other efficiency aspects to different extents. There are a lot of similarities in interdependency related managerial issues in companies of varying sizes and countries in Northern Europe. Differences found in the study are for instance the fact that smaller companies face more difficulties in implementing and evaluating interdependency procedures. Country differences between Estonia and Finland stem from working solutions to manage interdependencies on a daily basis.historical and cultural reasons, such as the special features of a transition country compared to a mature country. An overview of the dominant problems, best practices, and commonly used techniques associated with interdependency is provided in the study. Empirical findings show that many interdependency techniques are not used in practice. A multiple case study was performed in the study to find out how interdependencies are managed in real life on a daily basis. The results show that interdependencies are mostly managed in an informal manner. A description of managing the interdependencies and implementation procedures is given. Interdependency procedures are hard to implement, especially in smaller companies. Companies have difficulties in implementing interdependency procedures and evaluating them. The study contains detailed results on how companies have implemented working solutions to manage interdependencies on a daily basis