Project Apples or Project Oranges - assessing value

This essay gives an interesting and useful analysis of the place of financial and other metrics in assessing project value when describing a portfolio of projects.
Financial metrics are typically not enough. Lee Merkhofer discusses the difference between shareholder value and stakeholder value. Stakeholders will be the larger group that includes such interested parties as employees and local community as well as owners. Strict financial metrics are not enough.
But if you're going to use wider metrics, how do you make sure the metrics you are using for different kinds of project are actually consistent - that you're not using different scales. The answer is a Value Model which is a hierarchical set of value metrics that can be summarised up a single high level assessment of value. This approach fits well with the organisation of multiple portfolios with an organisation - allowing different management groups to manage portfolios for their own area. The trick here is to make sure that the branch of the hierarchy being managed is coherent - that there is a good description of which classes of projects should be considered within this sub-portfolio or referred to another. This, in turn, implies that a particular portfolio will have a good, clear definition for assessing value of candidate projects.
Expert Project Management - Choosing the Wrong Portfolio of Projects: Part 3