MoP or MSP – Which one is for me?

What is the difference between a portfolio and a programme?  It’s a common question and I’d recommend you start by asking:  “What are my objectives”   Are you looking to develop your skills in delivering transformational change or do you want to enhance your abilities to prioritise potential projects and align them with strategy?  In other words do you want to ‘do projects and programme the right way or ‘do the right projects and programmes in the first place?’.

MoP or MSP – Delivery of Change

If you’re looking to develop your skills in delivering change then MSP is your best bet.  MSP is a practical framework for programme management that contains principles, themes and a ‘transformational flow’ life cycle.  None of the principles covered in MSP are particularly new, nor for that matter are the themes (including organization, risk management and leadership) but bringing these ideas together in this framework gives you powerful tools to support the delivery of transformational change through, for example, a collection of related projects.  By aligning a number of related projects within a programme it gives your organization the capacity to deliver stepped changes in capability.  MSP gives you a detailed focus on areas such as benefits management, stakeholder engagement and transitioning of project outputs into the business.  MSP training may well be right for you if you are working or hope in the future to be working in transformational change initiatives.

MoP or MSP – Defining, Prioritizing and Selecting Change initiatives

However, if your role or objective relates more to defining, prioritizing and selecting change requirements and answering questions like ‘Which projects and programmes should my organization invest in?’ and ‘are these the right ones?’ then training in MoP is what you should seriously consider.  MoP is a set of principles, practices and techniques which provide guidance to determine the best programmes and projects for investments, and mapping them to the delivery of your organization’s strategic objectives.  This training is suitable for people at various levels in the organization from the CEO right through to programme and project managers.

It is worthwhile to highlight that both MSP and MoP are excellent frameworks which are internationally accepted best practice.  If you want to run your programmes the right way – to deliver benefits and transformational change – consider MSP.  If you need to pick the right programmes and projects for your organisation, then MoP is your way to go