PMO, portfolio and strategy
Are our projects contributing to our goals?
Drift from a goal shows early, and so do initiatives that serve no goal. All initiatives sit in one chain from vision to task.
Today
The strategy is in a document and the portfolio in a spreadsheet
The link is made once a year
At planning time the projects are mapped to the goals. Then new initiatives start, goals shift, and the mapping ages until the next planning round.
The portfolio status is collected
Every status report is its own file, and the consolidation takes its own time. By the time the overall picture stands, the first reports in it are already out of date.
Decisions have no home
What the steering committee decided is in the minutes. Which options were on the table and which objections were raised usually is not.
What changes
Every initiative has a place in the chain, or it stands out
Deviations show early. The RAG status follows from the initiatives below, and decisions are logged with their reasoning.
Strategy hierarchy
- Vision
- Strategy
- Goal and KPI
- Initiative
- Programme
- Project
- Task
What you have afterwards
What the PMO holds afterwards
- A portfolio in which initiatives without a goal stand out, with each initiative's goal.
- A portfolio picture without collecting, from status reports that come out of the work.
- Decisions that can still be traced a year later, in a decision log with options and reasoning.
- An overview of which benefit is at risk, through linked risks, issues and dependencies.
Common objections
- Our strategy is not structured that cleanly.
- It does not have to be on day one. The levels are in place, you fill what you have and link a project once its goal exists.
- We work in Jira and do not want to maintain things twice.
- Jira Cloud is connected, one way: ValueSpoc writes work packages across, and status flows back on schedule in the background. That keeps it clear which system leads.
- How does a RAG status come about, and can it be dressed up?
- An initiative's RAG status is weighted from the levels below it. A single red task does not turn it red. Status changes are logged with person and time for traceability.
See it first
How to keep a decision record that lasts
The guide describes the practice: record the options, note the dissent, set a review date and write the entry so that it is still understandable in a year.