Portfolio management capabilities

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Portfolio management should be a neutral party supporting decision making. What I mean here is that when different teams work hard on their important initiatives, they become emotionally attached to the topic – this is human nature for all of us. However, to make smart decisions across the portfolio, the portfolio manager should maintain an objective view across different initiatives and support, coach, and assess all initiatives equally.

However, this is easer said than done – also portfolio management professionals get emotionally attached to both people and initiatives, when helping things to get started and throughout execution. Let’s check out few important viewpoints to consider!

Creating a safe environment to align on different viewpoints

The discussions about large strategic initiatives often becomes difficult due to the diverse viewpoints involved. These differing perspectives can at times be completely opposite, making it challenging to reach a consensus. Here are few tips for creating alignment:

Sharing draft plans early to collect feedback from different parties – seeing a finalized plan which does not take into account our teams/units needs is frustrating
Having a neutral party to facilitate difficult alignment discussions – to give enough room for different viewpoints – both sides of the coin
Building portfolio sharing as a part of portfolio process – people have opportunity to learn about what different teams are working on

Comparing apples and oranges?

Another big challenge for objectivity is the wide range of different types of development ideas and projects included in the same portfolio scope. How to compare objectively process improvement ideas, IT development projects, operational excellence improvements, or new offering development?

Creating strategic buckets for different types of development to keep portfolio balanced – that is, must have activities related M&A do not eat up the whole budget for the IT development, as both have own buckets.
Defining a simple portfolio management framework – templates and tools are not always well received, but having is common way to define different initiatives ensures, helps to ensure different aspects are defined and thought through for different initiatives – which often also makes initiatives easier to compare
Data driven decision making & traditional financial methods, such as calculating the net present value or return of investment may also help. Check out more about prioritization methods from the previous blog.

Corporate politics

In large organizations, when different units have own targets and priorities, there may also be corporate politics. Sometimes the decision making is highly political.

Understand historical factors driving decision making – this may be especially difficult for new people in the organization, but find people who can help you to understand the background better. Also, if you have been working for a long time in the organization, pause on thinking is the history impacting your thinking and objectivity – usually it is to certain extend, as we are all human beings.
Help project and program managers to do precooking well – ensure alignment within the organization is reached, before heading to big decision making meetings.
Ensure portfolio governance forums are functioning – if it is difficult to make the decisions, clarify still governance and decision making forums.

This is the time of the year when many of us are looking into individual development plans. One of the challenges for portfolio management professionals working with large and complex development portfolios is the need to master so many different skills! On the other hand, working in portfolio management area is also a great opportunity for personal development, as there is a lot of room to build expertise on both methodologies but also related to portfolio content!

In my current workplace, E-shaped skill set with strong core skill and building up also supporting skills was recommended. I like this concept a lot and started to think, what are the core skills needed in development portfolio management and on the other hand, what are the supporting skills many portfolio managers really benefit from?

Core skills for portfolio managers – building a strong I

There are many great backgrounds for portfolio management professionals. Moving towards portfolio management is a natural development path for many project and program managers. Some of the great portfolio management colleagues have also business or product management backgrounds or experience from business controlling.

There are few core skills, I would say are very important to master, such as development methods – how to manage portfolio, program and projects. In addition to understanding the theory, it is really helpful to have practical experience from running different types of development initiatives. Also good understanding of portfolio finances is one of the key areas, linking to company financial processes, developing planning and benefit tracking practices.

Furthermore, lean and agile methods have become common in many organizations, and for example decision making and governance may be significantly impacted by lean and agile ways of working. Also developing portfolio management ways of working should follow lean and agile principles – finding ways to lean portfolio management processes and ensure still good governance.

By default, portfolio prioritization should be strategy driven, and understanding business strategy well to with portfolio decision making is critical. In addition to strategic thinking, also operational capability to make things happen. Combining the two approaches is not always easy!

Supporting skills for portfolio managers – building E shaped skills profile

In addition to strong core skills, there are other important areas to build sills when working in portfolio management roles. Here is some thinking:

Understanding the content is important – what are the products and offerings developed, or for example solutions and platforms in the scope of the portfolio? How is operating model, processes and IT tools impacted by the development initiatives? Understanding the content well enough is often extremely critical, especially when facilitating difficult prioritization discussions. For big portfolios, it is impossible to know everything, and here networking skills play a key role – knowing who knows within your organization.

During the past years, I have started to emphasize the importance of Change management and Communications skills. Even though you would develop beautiful new solutions, without communications the rest of the organization will not be aware of all the great achievements within your organizations. And without change management, even the best technical solution will not bring business benefits, if there is no buy in and adaptation of the new solution will not scale up. Even though I have learned a lot from great colleagues about these areas during the past years, definitely still a lot to improve for myself for these skills!

Portfolio management requires also a lot of leadership, coaching and networking skills! No matter how you are organized within your portfolio, strong leadership is required. Sometimes, when working with decentralized portfolios, where development is happening across different units and functions, networking and coaching skills become super relevant – leading without line management mandate is not easy, but very much needed to create clarity and focus! Also new type of leadership is needed when working with agile development – giving clear guardrails, but still empowering the teams with the decision making.

What does your E-look like?

We all work in different environments, and your E shaped skill set may look a bit different from what I drafted. Also, many portfolio management professionals have multiple hats, and role may be combined with business development or other duties.

What areas would you like to develop further this year, perhaps learn more about change management or further develop your coaching skills? Or learning about lean portfolio management?

Take a few minutes to think – what does your E-look like? What are the areas where you would like to grown and learn more? If you like, you can take a template from here:

The Quest for Objectivity in Portfolio Management – easier said then done!