Implementing Portfolio Managment across National Centers for Environmental Information's Center for Weather and Climate

Borne from processes developed within NOAA’s Climate Data Record Program and further matured by leveraging best practices in portfolio, program, project and configuration management, National Centers for Environmental Information's (NCEI) Center for Weather and Climate (CWC) has successfully piloted Portfolio Management of its key and critical investments. Following closely with Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) methodologies, objectives of the effort focused on developing a process that is transparent, efficient, and repeatable with the primary goal of assisting in organizational resource and budget planning. CWC investments were identified as either a product or service. These investments, along with their associated labor and resource analysis, were further categorized into 15 portfolios known as Product Areas, which are led by Product Area Leads (PALs). Each Product Area has an associated Product Area Management (PAM) Plan that describes the evolutionary growth path the PAL would like to implement. PALs were required to brief their PAM Plan to management, providing an opportunity to discuss and clarify recommendations contained within each plan. To close the process loop, management provided feedback to PALs, detailing how Product Area recommendations were utilized and the reasoning to the decisions made. This method assisted in identifying best-practice areas, improvement areas, and a continuity of information that will feed into building organizational corporate knowledge. Implementing a Portfolio Management approach provides a process to help guide CWC leadership’s resource and budgetary decisions, ensuring investment activities fulfill NOAA, NESDIS, and NCEI’s strategic vision in supporting end user needs.