Review Assurance Workbook – Portfolios and Portfolio Management

To support portfolios, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority (IPA, UK Government) has the mandate to periodically (every two to three years) review departmental portfolios to provide assurance and practical recommendations for improvement. The review aims to provide a realistic view on a portfolio’s ability to:

manage the portfolio’s strategic alignment and appropriate construction in line with delivery constraints.
monitor and respond to performance and risk across the portfolio.
build the right culture and processes to manage the portfolio; and
understand and respond to the capability and capacity requirements of the portfolio.

This comprehensive workbook shows the structure of the review, the four areas of investigation (strategic alignment and definition, performance and risk, management, culture, and processes, and capability) including the area and overall portfolio ratings and the expectations for each area of the review.

Strategic alignment and definition. Is the portfolio strategically aligned and defined appropriately?
Performance and risk. Does the portfolio understand its risk and performance profile and is able to respond to any areas which are outside tolerance or appetite?
Management, culture, and processes. Is the portfolio appropriately managed and governed with a culture that allows portfolio management to succeed?
Capability and Capacity. Does the portfolio understand its capability and capacity profile, regarding management and delivery, and have the ability to manage it?

A portfolio review involves aspects such as:

Initial assessment meeting
Building the review team
Agreeing a term of reference and holding a planning meeting
Interviewing stakeholders and reviewing documentation
Completing a report with recommendations marked as critical, essential, and recommended.

The workbook gives specific considerations when completing a portfolio review such as size and experience of the review team, scope and boundaries of the review, multiple and sub-portfolios, interviewees, Timing of the review, and ownership of the report.

For each area you get a set of questions and where to look for information (including the interviews itself).

The last part of the workbook explains the overall portfolio rating. This uses the same four level system (initial, performed, managed, optimized) as for the assurance topics but instead of assessing a specific area of practice, the review team is assessing portfolio management overall:

The maturity of portfolio management processes and practices examined through the four assurance topics; and
How well the purpose of portfolio management is being achieved.

As part of the overall portfolio rating the portfolio health could be included e.g., with a delivery confidence grid (see figure 3) or an achievability against attractiveness chart (see figure 4).

In the appendices you get definitions for a portfolio and portfolio management, a list of possible portfolio documentation and supporting guidance.

To read the complete workbook: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/assurance-workbook-portfolios-and-portfolio-management

Conclusion. A comprehensive guide with approximately 60 questions to assess your portfolio management maturity. If I compare this guide with the ten dimensions of portfolio management agility as described in the book Agile Portfolio Management I wrote together with Rini van Solingen I position the usage of this assessment for organizations who are using plan-based portfolio management. I miss some important areas that should be included in the portfolio assurance review. What’s the impact of an annual or shorter heartbeat of your portfolio management, how many projects are running in parallel and what mechanisms are used to revert or stop projects when it’s projected that they will not help to achieve the strategic objectives. I used the picture from the book to position this Assurance Workbook Portfolio Management.