Latest insights and trends in portfolio management

To coincide with the Portfolio Management SIG’s 10th anniversary (The first 10 years), a survey of portfolio management (PfM) practitioners was carried out in 2020 through a combination of a general invitation via newsletter and by participants at a PfM SIG webinar.

The survey results have now been analysed and, where possible, comparisons made with a similar survey in 2015.

The survey highlighted several changes from what was discovered in 2015, and for the survey we were able to show some interesting links between portfolio governance, the organisation’s approach to PfM and alignment of the portfolio to an organisation’s strategies.

Key insights are:

• Organisations with stronger levels of portfolio governance will have a portfolio which is better aligned to the organisation’s strategy.
• Organisations with robust portfolio governance possess a higher level of portfolio management maturity. Although only 19% of the organisations rated themselves “>75%” for governance.
• It is still evident that many aspects of portfolio management are proving a challenge to organisations. 42% say their organisation is “aware” of PfM rather than actively employing/developing it and 38% say their organisation has a PMO which has little or no impact on portfolio delivery.

To find out more, please take a look at the survey results and analysis and see what you think.

To understand the context of those taking part in the survey, people taking part were asked for: their role, the business sector of their organisation and the size of their organisation (people and portfolio).

Aspects of portfolio management covered by the survey included:

• The approach to PfM
• PMO role
• Decision-making process
• Governance
• Portfolio alignment
• Portfolio reviews and MI
• PfM maturity
• PfM Challenges
• Barriers to effective PfM

Another resource, where the survey was conducted is the December 2020  An introduction to portfolio management – the theory and in practice webinar.

Osian Evans
APM Portfolio Management SIG committee member