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The Portfolio Management (PM) capability aims to monitor and report on the status of an investment portfolio of IT programmes.

• Monitor ongoing risks, progress deviations, and other factors that might impact on the portfolio's success.
• Improve consistency in the evaluation of the portfolio's current status.
• Support timely delivery of programmes within the portfolio through effective monitoring of resource allocation and use.
• Improve confidence that the programmes in the portfolio remain aligned with the organization's overall strategy and business objectives.
• Amplify business value realization across related programmes.

The Portfolio Management (PM) capability helps ensure that the status of programmes is closely tracked to support early identification of potential issues and to minimize programme delivery conflicts.

Many IT functions are reputed to under-deliver across their IT investment portfolios.

An investment programme portfolio is likely to consist of complex and interdependent programmes, which compete for finite financial, technical, and people resources. A portfolio approach to managing programmes should be developed to closely monitor progress, and to ensure that planned resource allocations remain on track to deliver business value.

By establishing an effective Portfolio Management (PM) capability, an organization can closely monitor and track the progress of programmes that are part of the portfolio. Additionally, past experiences on the performance of previous portfolios can be fed forward to support the current portfolio's delivery¹², enabling more effective decisions to be taken that help minimize resource demand conflicts and support balanced portfolio execution.

The Portfolio Management (PM) capability is the ability to monitor, track, and analyse the programmes in the IT portfolio, and to report on their status. The Portfolio Management (PM) capability covers:

• Monitoring and tracking the progress and impact of programmes within the portfolio.
• Reviewing the programmes in the portfolio for adherence to the original business case.
• Monitoring utilization rates against planned resource allocations, including financial, technical, and people resources.
• Providing the Portfolio Planning and Prioritization (PPP) capability with an up-to-date portfolio status, including any deviations beyond a defined threshold on progress and expected impact.

Representative POMs are described for PM at each level of maturity.

2Basic

• Practice

  Centrally track the high-level delivery milestones for key programmes within the IT function.

  Outcome

  An overview of the current delivery status against the original plan facilitates improved decision-making in relation to managing the portfolio.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with milestone tracking.

• Practice

  Apply office productivity applications to support portfolio management approaches — for example, define templates using spreadsheet and document applications.

  Outcome

  Portfolio management is facilitated through the use of basic templates.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes tracked using defined templates.

• Practice

  Monitor the current against the planned spend for key programmes in the portfolio.

  Outcome

  Basic budget data is available, and can be used to support future portfolio decision-making.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with financial resource monitoring.

• Practice

  Establish a basic reporting approach that outlines the status of key programmes within the portfolio to key stakeholders.

  Outcome

  There is growing transparency on fundamental portfolio data such as current status, resource utilization, and any issues that might impact the portfolio's success.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with status reporting.

3Intermediate

• Practice

  Promote the central monitoring of standardized variables such as business value, risks, and resource utilization for most programmes in the portfolio — for example, by using a portfolio dashboard.

  Outcome

  There is increasing transparency on most programmes which can help initiate corrective actions.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with monitoring of standardized variables.

• Practice

  Regularly track defined success metrics for all programmes.

  Outcome

  Wider compliance to status reporting provides better visibility on the portfolio's entire progress, and the impact of any progress deviations.

  Metrics

  • Percentage of programmes with milestone tracking.
  • Percentage of programmes with status reporting.

• Practice

  Use a standard approach for reporting on the portfolio's status to key stakeholders at an agreed frequency.

  Outcome

  Visibility on the portfolio's progress is increased, supporting decisions on reprioritization if required.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with standardized status reporting.

4Advanced

• Practice

  Monitor the impact of corrective actions taken to ensure that appropriate variables are being tracked.

  Outcome

  The timely execution of corrective actions can prevent negative impacts.

  Metric

  Percentage of corrective actions that ensured the achievement of the original programme objectives.

• Practice

  Conduct scenario analysis across the entire portfolio, and consider the consequences that failure of key programmes or changes in strategic direction might have on the portfolio.

  Outcome

  Decision-making and planning are enhanced with better understanding of the key influencing variables.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes on which scenario analysis is conducted.

• Practice

  Provide reports on the portfolio's status to key stakeholders across the organization.

  Outcomes

  • Distribution of reports to stakeholders with appropriate authority ensures clear transparency on all issues that might impact the portfolio's success.
  • The impact of these issues is highlighted earlier and can be dealt with in a way that will not adversely impact the critical path activities.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with a current status report.

5Optimized

• Practice

  Make co-sharing of relevant portfolio programmes with key business ecosystem partners systematic.

  Outcome

  The impact of potential deviations across relevant business ecosystem partners is better understood.

  Metrics

  • Percentage of the portfolio for which key business ecosystem partners provide status report inputs.
  • Percentage of the portfolio on which status reports are shared with key business ecosystem partners.

• Practice

  Continually evaluate the value-at-risk for the entire portfolio.

  Outcome

  There is clearer understanding of variables that could lead to potential business value loss, especially where these are trending outside defined safe limits.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes that use value-at-risk and scenario analysis monitoring.

• Practice

  Monitor resource utilization across the portfolio, and redistribute unused resources to other programmes when such requirements arise.

  Outcome

  Resources can be temporarily or permanently diverted to support opportunities or challenges in other programmes.

  Metric

  Percentage of programmes with forward-looking resource monitoring.

• Practice

  Continually update the assumptions that underlie the portfolio to ensure that the full range of possible portfolio outcomes is covered.

  Outcome

  Underlying outcome scenarios are continually stress-tested to support timely decision-making.

  Metric

  Frequency of reviews of underlying assumptions (and updates as appropriate) for differing scenarios.

This capability was introduced in Revision 16 as a new critical capability.

It was deprecated in Revision 18.01, being replaced by Project Portfolio Management (18.01).

The following CCs cover topics that are related to PM in some way:

BARBenefits Assessment and Realization

Benefits forecasting and business case development

BARBenefits Assessment and Realization

Evaluation of potential benefits accruing from the programmes in the portfolio mix

CFPCapacity Forecasting and Planning

Modelling and planning the availability of resources for the IT function

PPMProgramme and Project Management

Setting up and executing individual programme tasks

PPMProgramme and Project Management

Support for programme execution and generation of individual status reports

PPPPortfolio Planning and Prioritization

Deciding on which programmes to invest in, continue, or stop

PPPPortfolio Planning and Prioritization

Prioritization of IT programmes for investment, and approval of the allocation of resources among them

RMRisk Management

Information on proactively assessing, managing, and handling exposure, on the potential outcomes of portfolio risks, and on scenario models

SPStrategic Planning

Details on business objectives and plans

SRCSourcing

Procuring services or suppliers

SUMSupplier Management

Managing suppliers