Alkemio Strategy

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portfolio-management-tooling

4 min read

Key Finding

Portfolio managers have significant unmet needs for tooling. Current practice relies on manual effort (Excel, reporting cycles, personal relationships), creating bottlenecks and missed opportunities. There is a clear design space for portfolio management systems, with different approaches suited to different portfolio types and organizational contexts.

Current State: Manual & Labor-Intensive

How Portfolio Managers Currently Work

  • Personal relationships: Core to portfolio oversight; informal networks of communication
  • Excel sheets: Primary tool for tracking and analysis
  • Periodic reporting cycles: Regular reporting to leadership (monthly, quarterly)
  • Time allocation: Significant time spent creating reports with data and visuals about projects and progress

Information Gaps

  • Limited visibility into portfolio-wide patterns
  • Reporting is labor-intensive and often out of date
  • Lessons from past projects are not systematically captured or accessible
  • Portfolio-level strategic alignment is manual and informal

Design Space: Portfolio Management Tooling

Level 1: Portfolio Health Dashboard (Helicopter View)

Core needs:

  • Phase tracking: Which projects are in which phase
  • Health assessment: Which projects are healthy and which are at risk
  • Overlap detection: Where there is duplication or overlap in problem-solving
  • Capacity allocation: Where capacity is allocated and where it is misallocated

Benefits:

  • Single view of portfolio status
  • Quick identification of problems requiring attention
  • Data-driven portfolio decisions

Level 2: Automated Monitoring & Escalation

Example: Novum’s Jira-based system (Marijn)

Components:

  • Automated notifications: Alert when projects stall in same phase too long
  • Monthly status narratives: Structured input from team members on progress and issues
  • Escalation protocols: Clear protocols for flagging and escalating issues
  • Activity tracking: Visibility into team engagement and participation

Benefits:

  • Early detection of problems
  • Consistent status information without manual report creation
  • Clear escalation paths for issues

Level 3: Lessons-Learned Database

Current gap:

  • Portfolio managers cannot easily ask “have we done this before?”
  • Lessons from past projects remain hidden in old files
  • Requires archaeological expedition through company history

Opportunity:

  • Searchable database of lessons learned across projects
  • Structured capture of what worked, what didn’t, and why
  • Enable peer learning and pattern recognition across portfolio

Benefits:

  • Avoid repeating mistakes
  • Build on proven approaches
  • Reduce reinvention and rework

Advanced: Challenge Portfolio Approach

Ambitious Information Architecture

RWS Example (Sonja’s approach): Rather than organizing portfolio around projects being worked on, organize around challenges and opportunities being addressed (opgave portfolio).

Model:

  • Bottom-up problem signals: Problems and needs surfaced by teams and stakeholders
  • Top-down strategy: Strategic priorities set by leadership
  • Synthesis: Create map of what matters (challenges/opportunities) and what is being done about each

Information needs:

  • What are the key challenges our organization faces?
  • Which challenges are being actively worked on?
  • Which challenges have no one addressing them?
  • Where are we duplicating effort on similar challenges?
  • Where is our strategic investment most needed?

Benefits:

  • Portfolio organized around outcomes (solving problems) rather than projects (activities)
  • Clear visibility into gaps between strategic priorities and resource allocation
  • Better ability to identify and redirect resources to highest-priority challenges
  • More strategic portfolio management

Portfolio Types & Information Architecture

Different portfolio contexts require different information architectures:

Project-Focused Portfolio (most common)

  • Projects organized by theme or phase
  • Emphasis on: health, risk, progress, resource allocation
  • Tool: Automated dashboard with project tracking

Challenge-Focused Portfolio (emerging need)

  • Challenges/opportunities organized by strategic theme
  • Emphasis on: problem landscape, coverage, strategic alignment
  • Tool: Challenge map with problem/solution correlation

Platform Opportunities

1. Portfolio Dashboard

  • Helicopter view with project phases, health, risk, capacity
  • Automated health indicators
  • Drill-down to project level
  • Suitable for: all portfolio types

2. Automated Monitoring

  • Phase stalling alerts
  • Team participation tracking
  • Monthly status narrative collection
  • Escalation workflow
  • Suitable for: project-focused portfolios

3. Lessons-Learned Repository

  • Searchable database of past project learnings
  • Structured capture: what, why, result, applicability
  • Tagging and cross-referencing
  • Suitable for: all portfolio types

4. Challenge Portfolio Mapping

  • Visualization of challenge landscape
  • Problem-solution correlation
  • Strategic alignment mapping
  • Gap analysis (unaddressed challenges)
  • Suitable for: strategic portfolio management
  • Signal detection: portfolio managers value signal detection over data volume
  • Three structural collaboration modes emerge across practice
  • Facilitator role is multifaceted and highly demanding