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Pipeline management is a term applied to a Resource Management process designed to optimise the outcomes of a 'pipeline' of competing (usually development) projects.

Traditionally, functional managers are responsible for handling the flow of projects through their area - but this often leads to poor overall business performance - as the managers compete within the organisation for limited resources.

Pipeline management applies Strategic Resource Management techniques to balance, align and agree priorities across an organisation.

For example, in a traditional business with 100 product ideas competing for human, physical and financial resources, it is not uncommon to find at any time

• 20 projects seeking funds
• 20 funded
• just 1 new project/year coming to fruition.

By mapping and understanding the inter-relationships between corporate development activities and their associated resource costs, functional managers are better able to see the resource implications for individual projects at an early stage an prioritise on those projects most likely to come to fruition within corporate time-scales and objectives. In this way, for the same resources, the 100 good ideas in the example above might at any one time become:

• 40 project under resource investigation
• 20 development projects at the specification stage
• 15 in development
• perhaps 6 projects being realised each year