Portfolio Performance
Portfolio Performance
This domain tests how you measure and steer the portfolio as a whole: supply and demand, portfolio value, balancing, optimization, and performance metrics. Component-level cost and schedule variance alone will not answer portfolio questions.
Core rules
- Manage demand (initiatives) against supply (funding, people, assets) and make trade-offs explicit.
- Portfolio value includes financial and non-financial benefits; use balanced measures, not a single index.
- Optimization is continuous: rebalance when strategic priorities, constraints, or component performance change.
- Use portfolio-level metrics such as strategic contribution, benefit realization, capacity utilization, and component health.
Worked example Demand is 120 FTE; supply is 100 FTE. Components X, Y, Z score 88, 76, 61 on the agreed prioritization model; X and Y require scarce skills. Fund X and Y, defer Z, and use the released 20 FTE to protect X's critical path. Reasoning: funding all three would overcommit capacity and degrade delivery; the portfolio decision is to maximize strategic value within supply, not to keep every component alive.
Traps
- Optimizing each component locally while the portfolio remains unbalanced.
- Reporting only cost and schedule variance at component level.
- Ignoring capacity constraints when approving demand.
- Continuing a component because of sunk cost rather than remaining value.
- Treating the portfolio as static between annual reviews.