Portfolio Management Maturity Assessment

A Portfolio is used to summarize several projects or programs that have a mutual target. Portfoliomanagement therefore allows me to track the development against the target. Portfolios are used to fund strategic initiatives and assign demands/projects/programs that drive that initiative. Portfoliomanagement support me to decide which investments to fund to achieve the goal(s). Portfolio is the sum of all currently ongoing project in our organization and thus Portfoliomanagement is allowing for an overview over all projects.

How is the Portfolio budgeting process being set up currently?

We don’t budget portfolios, but projects are assigned to portfolios and a portfolio boards decide which projects shall be executed. We don’t budget portfolios, only projects are funded. We have an overall budget per portfolio per year and the projects selected for execution consume the portfolio budgets. A budget per year is defined per portfolio which is split into CAPEX and OPEX budget as well as an overview over (personnel) capacity. Projects selected for execution need to fit into the budgets as well as into the capacity available.

How do you rank and assess, which items should be selected for execution?

We have a stakeholder assessment in place and maintain project priority and complexity – all influence the priority for execution in a defined ranking ruleset. There is no formal evaluation, which projects would have the most impact on the portfolio. Evaluation is done on the priority of the projects and leads to a sorted list of projects to be selected for execution. We assess projects based on priority and complexity and have set up ranking rules to sort the projects properly.

How do you know, if a portfolio is executing against the initial plan?

We gather all project status reports and summarize those on portfolio level. We gather actual data from projects (status, financial performance and resource consumption) and compare those against the initial plan(s). We gather actual data from projects (status, financial performance and resource consumption) and use this for tracking. Besides comparing actual data against planned values, we also track the development of the underlying KPIs in comparison.

Portfolio Management Maturity Assessment