On the Roles of Project, Program and Portfolio Governance

This work proposes a new motivation for a literature review on the concepts of roles in project, program and portfolio governance within organizational overall governance. Recent literature has been promoting a paradigm change in the way how the research and practitioner communities should approach project management. Under such change, it mattered to better understand in a first moment which drivers regarding project, program and portfolio governance roles motivated or, in part, enabled such change. In a second moment the focus was placed on the way how project, program and portfolio governance roles (whereas the concept of role demonstrates to need clarifications under the main standards and practitioners books) are addressed from that paradigm shift onwards. As a result, we concluded that current standards and practitioners books do not promote and effective integration with organizational governance, and although initiatives as Research Project Management promote a shift by addressing a required multidisciplinary approach on project management discipline, such governance alignment is yet to be achieved. The conclusion and final remarks on the future work, stresses onto the evidenced gaps in promoting a coherent set of theories, models and tools in project management discipline, and the apparent suitability of Enterprise Engineering discipline to address them.