Enterprise Portfolio Management (EPM)

What is Enterprise Portfolio Management?

The premise of EPM is that you can create scenarios on capacity (skill/team) or money with a single view across multiple portfolios. This gives you a centralized grip on your strategic capacity and common change budget. Various tools, such as extensive filtering and reporting, are available for this via our Insights (PowerBI).

An example: in your organization there is a group of project managers who are assigned to multiple portfolios. The portfolios with (potential) projects for which these project managers are deployed can be displayed together in one Enterprise Portfolio. The available capacity can then be allocated to the various projects. This can be done, for example, based on priority or contribution to strategic themes.

How does Enterprise Portfolio Management work?

Enterprise Portfolio Management can be accomplished in a few steps.

1. Create an Enterprise Portfolio
   • Click the app selector in the upper-left corner of the screen.
   • Then choose ‘Portfolio’ Please Note: you will only see the ‘Portfolio’ button if you are already assigned to a portfolio.
   • Then choose the ‘+ Add enterprise portfolio option’
   • Save the Enterprise Portfolio: in the dialog you can name the new Enterprise Portfolio, save it in a so called “Organization Unit” and assign a primary owner. Please Note: that you can only save an Enterprise Portfolio in an Organization Unit in which Portfolio Management is activated and to which you have rights.
2. Link existing portfolios to an Enterprise Portfolio
   • Once you have an Enterprise Portfolio, existing portfolios can make their data visible in it. You do this by indicating in the existing portfolio that it participates in a particular Enterprise Portfolio. A portfolio can participate in several Enterprise Portfolios.
   • This construction ensures that an Enterprise Portfolio does not have direct access to a portfolio. The right for inspection must be explicitly given by the portfolio in question.

How do you participate in an Enterprise Portfolio?

1. Open the portfolio that will participate
2. If you are administrator or manager/supporter of the portfolio that wants to participate, you have the possibility to indicate that: click in the right menu bar on the icon ‘Enterprise Portfolios’. In the screen that appears you can click on ‘+ Add Enterprise Portfolio’: choose the desired Enterprise Portfolio to participate in.
   • By clicking on the right menu bar (press the ‘<<‘ button at the top of the menu bar) you can see which Enterprise Portfolios are participating in or if you are in the Portfolio which Portfolios are participating.
3. Increase availability and budget.
   • The Enterprise Portfolio shows the data of the participating portfolios: e.g. planned hours or costs. The idea behind the Enterprise Portfolio is that centrally over portfolio items (projects) of multiple portfolios the capacity of certain skills/teams or the financial budget (per financial category) is assigned. Therefore, in the Enterprise Portfolio you need to enter the available capacity (as type=Capacity) or money (as type=Reserved) (at the bottom of the screen).
     
   • Configuration and operation of the screens in the Enterprise Portfolio is the same as the same screens in a normal portfolio. Articles for this are available in the knowledge base.
4. Create a scenario planning. Once the available capacity and/or budget is entered, it can be distributed among the portfolio initiatives of the different participating portfolios. The distribution can be saved as a scenario.
5. Allocate capacity and budget based on a scenario. When a scenario is satisfactorily worked out you discuss it with the participating portfolios. Then you can apply a scenario and the allocation of capacity and/or budget is applied in the Enterprise Portfolio but also in the participating portfolios.