Portfolio Assurance Resources
Designing a portfolio delivery plan
The information in this guide is intended for general purposes only. For more specific guidance around your organisation’s projects, please get in touch with our team.
- Identify the high level business goals – and work backwards
- Taking stock of existing projects and how they’re contributing to the business
- Establishing new projects to meet strategic objectives
- Conducting the prioritisation process
- Identifying budget, people and time requirements
- Laying out projects in a logical order – where are the dependencies?
- Getting clear on milestones and success measures
- Reporting and meeting – how will governance support the delivery of your portfolio?
- Discuss your portfolio delivery plan with us
- Where to next?
- Latest Portfolio Assurance Articles
A large organisation with many concurrent projects demands frameworks to ensure that each element of the portfolio is working as it should. Ultimately, the projects and programmes should directly support the business’ strategic imperatives. A portfolio isn’t just a way to refer to a group of projects; it’s an actual practice of managing and understanding projects at any point in time.
A delivery plan should be created to describe how a portfolio of projects will be delivered. The leadership team will need to have a shared understanding of this plan. The delivery plan may exist as a centralised document where all stakeholders can refer to the various projects and their respective roles.
Designing a portfolio plan that’s easy to refer to is a strong tool for any organisation. It will help define dependencies, risks, financial demands and responsibilities.
Portfolio delivery plans will need to be kept current. There is an ongoing duty for someone in the business to ensure this happens. As strategic and financial objectives evolve, so too should the portfolio delivery plan.
In this guide, we’ll touch on some areas that a portfolio delivery plan will need to consider. As every business has its own set of requirements and objectives, these are only general tips – if you’re interested in getting bespoke help on your portfolio, speak to our team about our assurance services.
Identify the high level business goals – and work backwards
The delivery plan shouldn’t be developed without a very clear idea of the business goals. As many of the timeframes for completing programmes of work in the organisation will span many years, big strategic changes will similarly require a long-term view.
Remember that business goals can change over time, thanks to market forces, new leadership or similar. The portfolio is a living, breathing framework that will need changing and tweaking. Projects within it will be completed, prioritised and deprioritised depending on the needs of the business.
A clear view of the business goals and strategy is crucial for a good portfolio delivery plan. You’ll want to capture an overarching strategy in the document – what is the portfolio designed to achieve? The strategy should outline how the projects and programmes will work together to deliver the key business objectives. It should also include timelines, dependencies and risks.
Taking stock of existing projects and how they’re contributing to the business
Taking stock is something that should happen both across the financial year and annually as part of a formal portfolio review. To take stock of how projects are going, you’ll need to have good governance in place that can provide an organisation-wide view of performance.
This is why we encourage our clients to get good project practices in order to master the art of accurate portfolio delivery – you’re only as effective as the information you have.
Consider how each project is performing in these ways:
Is the project delivering to scheduled milestones?
Are costs being managed well to ensure delivery is met within budget?
Is the quality of the delivered outcome achieving what the business needs?
Is the project on track to be completed within the time frame?
Does the project scope still fit the business requirements?
Is there still stakeholder buy-in for the project and its purpose?
These are big questions, and they should be answered through a mix of existing reporting and conversations with stakeholders. By the time a portfolio delivery plan is being worked on, existing projects should have this information to hand.
Establishing new projects to meet strategic objectives
For example, an organisation may identify an issue with its in-person customer experience. There may be ongoing work to improve the general customer experience, such as a new public-facing website, but the leadership team may decide that a new programme to train customer service staff is required in order to improve the in-person customer experience.
Projects introduced to meet the needs of the business strategy have many advantages. These benefits include leadership buy-in, easier communication to the organisation, and importantly, it makes for cohesive reporting and governance between project and business strategy.
For this reason, new projects incorporated into a portfolio with leadership team buy-in play a vital role in the delivery plan.
Conducting the prioritisation process
Prioritisation is something that may be owned by someone in a portfolio leadership position. But they will require significant input from senior management and the project management office. It’s important not to get distracted by lower priority work, even if these activities are easier to deliver. We often have conversations with our clients about differentiating between ‘projects that we can complete well’ and ‘activities that need to happen to achieve the business strategy’. Even organisations with mature project management practices can inadvertently get preoccupied with projects versus the needs of the business strategy. This is another reason why having a good portfolio management function is so beneficial to businesses wanting to see tangible change.
Identifying budget, people and time requirements
Mapping out the organisations’ project portfolio delivery allows for an accurate picture of where budget will need to be allocated. It can also help determine whether the project needs to hire new people or shift people around in order to deliver what’s required. This should be done carefully, as too much (or too frequent) shuffling of people can create risks of staff attrition.
The budget of a portfolio will need to be considered. . First, the portfolio will need sufficient budget in order to deliver the strategic outcomes. A good portfolio delivery plan should provide clear rationale of the need for a certain budget. Beyond budget changes, there will be significant time spent to determine the best split of the budget across the various initiatives. While budget reallocation has important knock on effects, there may be instances in which the needs of the business simply require certain projects to adjust.
The portfolio delivery plan should outline these changes, and it should identify the risks and dependencies of each change. The plan should also describe how it will mitigate issues, such as project staff leaving etc.
Laying out projects in a logical order – where are the dependencies?
An example of this might be the implementation of an inventory system before an infrastructure overhaul project can start. Having these mapped out over a number of years can give the leadership team and stakeholders a really clear view of what needs to happen and when. It will also help reduce periods where project teams are idle as they wait for something to be completed elsewhere.
Getting clear on milestones and success measures
Your portfolio delivery plan will be far more valuable if it includes milestones, performance indicators and success measures. Key performance indicators help the business know if the plan is working or not. Success measures may include:
- Completion of project phases.
- Phases completed within budget.
- Outcome measures (e.g. efficiency or financial savings due to project outcomes).
- Strategic outcome measures – how will the business know that it’s achieving its strategy?
Remember to map the success measures of each project to the overarching portfolio objectives and the business strategy. If a business aligns all of these things, you have built a strong foundation on which to start delivering to the plan.
Reporting and meeting – how will governance support the delivery of your portfolio?
The portfolio delivery plan is not a one and done artefact. It should be used to measure the performance of your portfolio. You’ll want to link your reporting practices with the portfolio’s performance – ie. what information needs to be collected from each project to feed into the portfolio performance reporting?
- Meetings and discussions on the portfolio should also be outlined in your delivery plan
- How often will there be in-person discussions about the projects within the portfolio?
- What agenda items need to be in place to make sure that all projects are being held accountable?
Capture this in the plan and get buy in and the governance will fall into place after it.
Discuss your portfolio delivery plan with us
We’re experts at both the delivery of projects and the way they’re planned out as part of a portfolio. If you work with IQANZ, we’ll help guide you on your portfolio delivery plan. To proceed with executing on a portfolio, organisations need the confidence that their projects will likely succeed and work well together. That’s what we help you achieve. Start by contacting our team to discuss your specific requirements and we’ll go from there!
Where to next?
Managing risks In a project portfolio
Risks exist in every project portfolio. It’s not possible to eliminate them, but it is possible to be well-prepared.
Learn More >>
Designing a portfolio delivery plan
Any good organisational initiative needs a strong plan. A portfolio approach to projects relies on good planning to ensure the health and success of each underlying activity. We explain what this looks like in our guide.
Learn More >>
Guide to portfolio governance
Governance doesn’t just exist at the project level - good practices around the reporting and management of the portfolio in its entirety helps organisations stay in control and on budget.
Learn More >>
Prioritising projects in an organisation
Priority of business initiatives is complicated - there are financial, strategic and even political aspects to project portfolio management.
Learn More >>
The secret to successful portfolio delivery
What makes a business adept at delivering on multiple initiatives concurrently? We offer some insight in this guide.
Learn More >>
Building a balanced project portfolio
The balance of your project portfolio between activities that help drive towards strategic goals is critical to get right. We explain why.
Latest Portfolio Assurance Articles
Common Risks Within A Project Portfolio
Every project has its risks – it’s part of the territory. And a careful risk analysis of a project will typically surface a fair few items for a risk register to keep on the radar. It doesn’t take long then, for an organisation with multiple projects running, to become overwhelmed with understanding its business risk at any one time.
Why an organisation’s portfolio needs everyone’s input
Portfolios of projects or programmes require careful management to ensure that the overall strategic objectives and budget is properly balanced. But who is accountable for ensuring this happens?
How assurance has your back – helping you deliver successful projects time after time
There’s many benefits to having QA involved in portfolio management. Here’s just a few.
Signs it’s time to cut back the number of active projects
Is your organisation trying to do too much in too short a space of time? If so, it might be worth reprioritising projects to give each the best shot at success.
How to identify recurring issues in your projects
There’s a lot to be learned from assessing common themes across all projects. We offer a few ways to get insights from your own project portfolio.
5 reasons why you should reprioritise a project
In a business with multiple projects active at any one time, it’s sometimes hard to know which of these is a priority in a world of competing objectives. We talk about reasons why you might reprioritise the portfolio.
Explore our other QA services
Get In Touch
IQANZ Limited
Level 2, PSA House
11 Aurora Terrace
PO Box 11-757 Wellington,
New Zealand
04 473 4340
info@iqanz.com