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As an IT leader, you’re responsible for steering the realization of business strategy through wise investments in and responsible stewardship of assets, applications, portfolios, programs, products, and projects.
You need a tool to help align goals and facilitate processes across business units. You’re aware of a tool space called Strategic Portfolio Management, and it looks like it could help, but you’re unsure of how it’s different from some of the existing tools you already pay for and don’t use to their full functionality.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

As a software space, strategic portfolio management lacks a unified definition. In the same way that it took many years for project portfolio management to stabilize as a concept distinct from traditional enterprise project management, strategic portfolio management is experiencing a similar period of formational uncertainty. Unpacking what’s truly new and valuable in helping to define strategy and drive strategic outcomes versus what’s just repackaged as SPM is an important first step, but it's not an easy undertaking.

Impact and Result

In this concise publication, we will cut through the marketing to unpack what strategic portfolio management is, and what makes it distinct from similar capabilities. We’ll help to situate you in the space and assess the extent to which your tooling needs can be met by a strategic portfolio management offering.

Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management Research & Tools

1. Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management Storyboard – A guide to help you drive strategic outcomes.

In this concise publication we introduce you to strategic portfolio management and consider the extent to which your organization can leverage an SPM application to help drive strategic outcomes.

2. Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment Tool – Use this tool to determine if your organization can benefit from the features and functionality of an SPM approach.

Use this Excel workbook to determine if your organization can benefit from the features and functionality of an SPM approach or whether you need something more like a traditional project portfolio management tool.

Make Sense of Strategic Portfolio Management

Separate what's new and valuable from bloated claims on the hype cycle.

Analyst Perspective

Do you need strategic portfolio management, or do you need to do portfolio management more strategically?

Travis Duncan, Research Director, PPM and CIO Strategy

Travis Duncan
Research Director, PPM and CIO Strategy
Info-Tech Research Group

While the market is eager to get users into what they're calling "strategic portfolio management," there's a lot of uncertainty out there about what this market is and how it's different from other, more established portfolio disciplines – most significantly, project portfolio management.

Indeed, if you look at how the space is covered within the industry, you'll encounter a dog's breakfast of players, a comparison of apples and oranges: Jira in the same quadrants as Planisware, Smartsheets in the same profiles as Planview and ServiceNow. While each of the individual players is impressive, their areas of focus are unique and the extent to which they should be compared together under the category of strategic portfolio management is questionable.

It speaks to some of the grey area within the SPM space more generally, which is at a bit of a crossroads: Will it formally shed the guardrails of its antecedents to become its own space, or will it devolve into a bait and switch through which capabilities that struggled to gain much traction beyond IT settings seek to infiltrate the business and grow their market share under a different name?

Part of it is up to the rest of us as users and potential customers. Clarifying what we need before we jump into something simply because our prior attempts failed will help determine whether we need a unique space for strategic portfolio management or whether we simply need to do portfolio management more strategically.

Executive Summary

Your Challenge	Common Obstacles	Info-Tech's Approach
As an IT leader, you're responsible for steering the realization of business strategy through wise investments in/ and responsible stewardship of: assets, applications, portfolios, programs, products, and projects. You need a tool to help align goals and facilitate processes and communications across business units. You're aware of a tool space called strategic portfolio management, and it looks like it could help, but you're unsure of how it's different from some of the existing tools you already license.	As a software space, strategic portfolio management lacks a unified definition. Unpacking what's truly new in helping to define strategy and drive strategic outcomes versus what's just repackaged as SPM is no small undertaking. Because SPM can span different business units, ways of working, and roles, getting buy-in, alignment, and adoption can be even more precarious than it is when implementing other types of solutions.	In this concise publication, we will cut through the marketing to unpack what strategic portfolio management is and what makes it distinct from similar capabilities. Assess the extent to which your tooling needs can be met by a strategic portfolio management offering or the extent to which you may need to look at other software categories. With a better understanding of the space, we hope to help facilitate better internal discussions around the value of SPM for your business needs.

Info-Tech Insight
In the same way that it took many years for PPM to stabilize as a concept distinct from traditional enterprise project management, strategic portfolio management is experiencing a similar period of formational uncertainty. In a space that can be all things to all users, clarify your actual needs before jumping onto a bandwagon and ending up with something that you don't need, and that the organization can't adopt.

Strategic portfolio management is enterprise portfolio management

Evolved from various other capabilities and vendor solutions, strategic portfolio management (SPM) seeks to connect strategy to execution.

While the concept of 'strategic portfolio management' has been written about within project portfolio management circles for nearly 20 years, SPM, as a distinct organizational competence and software category, is a relatively new and largely vendor-driven capability.

First emerging in the discourse during the mid-to-late 2010s, SPM has evolved from its roots in traditional enterprise project portfolio management. Though, as we will discuss, it has other antecedents not limited to PPM.

In this publication, we'll unpack what SPM is, how it is distinct (and, in turn, how it is not distinct) from PPM and other capabilities, and we will consider the extent to which your organization can and should leverage an SPM application to help drive strategic outcomes.

–The increasing need to deliver value from digital initiatives is giving rise to strategic portfolio management, a digital investment management discipline that enables strategy realization in complex dynamic environments."
– OnePlan, "Is Strategic Portfolio Management the Future of PPM?"

Only 2% of business leaders are confident that they will achieve 80% to 100% of their strategic objectives.
Source: Smith, 2022

Put strategic portfolio management in context

SPM is a new stage in the history of project portfolio management more generally. While it's emerging as a distinct capability, and it borrows from capabilities beyond PPM, unpacking its distinctiveness is best done by first understanding its source.

Understand the recent triggers for strategic portfolio management

Triggers for the emergence of strategic portfolio management in the discourse include the pace of technology-introduced change, the waning of enterprise project management, and challenges around enterprise PPM tool adoption.

Spot the difference?

Scope, focus, and audience are just a few of the factors distinguishing what the market calls "SPM" from traditional PPM.

Project Portfolio Management	Differentiator	Strategic Portfolio Management
Work-Level (Tactical)	Primary Orientation	High-Level (Strategic)
CIO	Accountable for Outcomes	CxO
Project Manager	Responsible for Outcomes	Product Management Organization
Project Managers, PMO Staff	Targeted Users	Business Leaders, ePMO Staff
Project Portfolio(s)	Essential Scope	Multi-Portfolio (Project, Application, Product, Program, etc.)
IT Project Delivery and Business Results Delivery	Core Focus	Business Strategy and Change Delivery
Project Scope	Change Impact Sensitivity	Enterprise Scope
IT and/or Business Benefit	Language of Value	Value Stream
Project Timelines	Main View	Strategy Roadmaps
Resource Capacity	Primary Currency	Money
Work-Assignment Details	Modalities of Planning	Value Milestones & OKRs
Work Management	Modalities of Execution	Governance (Project, Product, Strategy, Program, etc.)
Project Completion	Definitions of "Done"	Business Capability Realization

Info-Tech Insight
The distinction between the two capabilities is not necessarily as black and white as the table above would have it (some "PPM" tools offer what we're identifying above as "SPM" capabilities), but it can be helpful to think in these binaries when trying to distinguish the two capabilities. At the very least, SPM broadens its scope to target more executive and business users, and functions best when it's speaking at a higher level, to a business audience.

Strategic portfolio management offers a more holistic view of the enterprise

At its best, strategic portfolio management can accommodate various paradigms of work management and incorporate different types of portfolio management.

Perhaps the biggest evolution from traditional PPM that strategic portfolio management promises is that it casts a wider net in terms of the types of work it tracks (and how it tracks that work) and the types of portfolios it accommodates.

Not bound to the concepts of "projects" and a "project portfolio" specifically, SPM broadens its scope to encompass capabilities like product and product portfolio management, enterprise architecture management, security and risk management, and more.

Where a PPM solution only shows one piece of the puzzle, SPM looks at the entire investment ecosystem, tracking strategic goals, the ideas generated to help achieve those goals, and all the various kinds of investments made in the service of those goals.
what's more, where traditional PPM tools required users to adhere to a certain way of working and managing tasks, SPM is more flexible, relying on integrations across various ways of working to provide higher-level insight on the progress of work and the achievement of goals.

Deliver business strategy and change effectively

Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Framework

"An SPM tool will capture business strategy, business capabilities, operating models, the enterprise architecture and the project portfolio with unmatched visibility into how they all relate. This will give...a robust understanding of the impact of a proposed IT change " and enable IT and business to act like cocreators driving innovation."
– Paula Ziehr

You might need a strategic portfolio management tool if–

If you find yourself facing any of these situations, it might be time to step away from your PPM tool and into an SPM approach:

Your organization is facing a large implementation that will cross multiple departmental units and requires alignment across senior leadership (e.g. a digital transformation initiative).
You currently have disparate systems tracking different portfolios (project, product, applications, etc.) and types of investments, but lack insight into the whole in terms of how work efforts and investments tie back to strategy realization.
You are an ePMO or a strategy realization office that doesn't manage work necessarily, but that rather ensures that the work, assets, and capabilities that are funded connect to strategy and drive the realization of strategy.

Sixty one percent of leaders acknowledge their companies struggle to bridge the gap between creating a strategy and executing on that strategy.
Source: StrategyBlocks, 2020

Get to know your strategic portfolio management stakeholders

In terms of users, SPM's focus is further up the org chart than most applications, relying on high-level but usable outputs to help drive decision making.

ePMO or Strategy Realization Office	Senior Leadership and Executive Stakeholders	Business Leads and IT Directors and Managers
SPM tools are best facilitated through enterprise PMOs or strategy realization offices. After all, in enterprises, these are the entities charged with the planning, execution, and tracking of strategy. Their roles within the tool typically entail: Helping to facilitate processes and collect data. Data quality and curation. Report distribution and consumption.	As those with the accountability and authority to drive the organization's strategy, you could argue that these stakeholders are the primary stakeholders for an SPM tool. Their roles within the tool typically entail: Using strategy map and ideation functionalities. Using reports to steward strategy realization.	SPM targets more business users as well as senior IT managers and directors. Their roles within the tool typically entail: Using strategy map and ideation functionalities. Providing updates to ePMOs on progress.

ePMO or Strategy Realization Office

Senior Leadership and Executive Stakeholders

Business Leads and IT Directors and Managers

SPM tools are best facilitated through enterprise PMOs or strategy realization offices. After all, in enterprises, these are the entities charged with the planning, execution, and tracking of strategy.

Their roles within the tool typically entail:

Helping to facilitate processes and collect data.
Data quality and curation.
Report distribution and consumption.

As those with the accountability and authority to drive the organization's strategy, you could argue that these stakeholders are the primary stakeholders for an SPM tool.

Their roles within the tool typically entail:

Using strategy map and ideation functionalities.
Using reports to steward strategy realization.

SPM targets more business users as well as senior IT managers and directors.

Their roles within the tool typically entail:

Using strategy map and ideation functionalities.
Providing updates to ePMOs on progress.

What should you look for in a strategic portfolio management tool? (1 of 2)

Standard features for SPM include:

Name	Description
Analytics and Reporting	SPM should provide access to real-time dashboards and data interpretation, which can be exported as reports in a range of formats.
Strategy Mapping and Road Mapping	SPM should provide access to up-to-date timeline views of strategies and initiatives, including the ability to map such things as dependencies, market needs, funding, priorities, governance, and accountabilities.
Value Tracking and Measurement	SPM should include the ability to forecast, track, and measure return on investment for strategic investments. This includes accommodations for various paradigms of value delivery (e.g. traditional value delivery and measurement, OKRs, as well as value mapping and value streams).
Ideation and Innovation Management	SPM should include the ability to facilitate innovation management processes across the organization, including the ability to support stage gates from ideation through to approval; to articulate, socialize, and test ideas; perform impact assessments; create value canvas and OKR maps; and prioritize.
Multi-Portfolio Management	SPM should include the ability to perform various modalities of portfolio management and portfolio optimization, including project portfolio management, applications portfolio management, asset portfolio management, etc.
Interoperability/APIs	An SPM tool should enable seamless integration with other applications for data interoperability.

What should you look for in a strategic portfolio management tool? (2 of 2)

Advanced features for SPM can include:

Name	Description
Product Management	SPM can include product-management-specific functionality, including the ability to connect product families, roadmaps, and backlogs to enterprise goals and priorities, and track team-level activities at the sprint, release, and campaign levels.
Enterprise Architecture Management	SPM can include the ability to define and map the structure and operation of an organization in order to effectively coordinate various domains of architecture and governance (e.g. business architecture, data architecture, application architecture, security architecture, etc.) in order to effectively plan and introduce change.
Security and Risk Management	SPM can include the ability to identify and track enterprise risks and ensure compliance controls are met.
Lean Portfolio Management	SPM can include the ability to plan and report on portfolio performance independent from task level details of product, program, or project delivery.
Investment and Financial Management	SPM can include the ability to forecast, track, and report on financials at various levels (strategy, product, program, project, etc.).
Multi-Methodology Delivery	SPM can include the ability to plan and execute work in a way that accommodates various planning and delivery paradigms (predictive, iterative, Kanban, lean, etc.).

What's promising within the space?

As this space continues to stabilize, the following are some promising associations for business and IT enablement.

1. SPM accommodates various ways of working.

Where traditional PPM and work management tools required that users change their processes and tasking paradigms to fit within the tool's rigid task management and data structures, the best SPM tools are those that are adaptable to various ways of working and can accommodate many tasking and work management models.
Sometimes this is done through extensive integrations and APIs that pull data from existing work management applications into a single view within the SPM tool, and other times, this is done by abstracting the task-level details into a higher-level reporting structure (it can depend on the solution). In any event, the best SPMs are bound to one work management model.

2. SPM puts the focus on value and change.

With its focus on the planning and execution of strategy, SPM can't avoid putting a spotlight on value and value realization. The best SPM tools include the ability to forecast, track, and measure return on investment for strategic investments, and they accommodate for various paradigms of value delivery (e.g. traditional value delivery and measurement, OKRs, as well as value mapping and value streams).
Of course, you can't realize value without successfully fostering change. And while SPM tools don't necessarily offer functionality explicitly identifiable as organizational change management, they can act as agents of change in putting the spotlight on the execution of change at the executive level.

3. SPM fosters a coherent approach to demand management.

With its goal of ensuring that strategy informs the organization of portfolios and guides the selection of projects and delivery of products, SPM can potentially bring some order to what is often a chaotic demand-management landscape, ensuring that planned and in-progress work is well justified from an ROI perspective.

What's of concern within the space?

As a progeny from other capabilities, SPM has some risks and connotations potential users should be wary of.

1. The space is rife with IT buzzwords and, as a concept, is sometimes used as a repackaging of failing concepts.

You don't need to spend too much time engaging with the literature around SPM before you notice the marketing appeals heavily to concepts like "digitalization," "digital transformation," "continual innovation," "agility/Agile," and the like. While these are all important concepts, and the pursuit of them is worthwhile in many cases, there's no denying they're used as consultant and vendor buzzwords, deployed to excite our imaginations, without necessarily providing much meat around what they mean or how they're deployed and successfully sustained.
Indeed, many concepts and capabilities that appear in relation to SPM are on the downward swing of industry hype cycles, suggesting that SPM may be being used by vendors and consultants as another attempt to repackage and capitalize on these concepts even as practitioners grow weary and suspicious of the marketing claims built up around them.

2. Some solutions that identify as SPM are not.

Because it's on the upward swing of its place in the hype cycle, many established PPM and service management vendors are applying the 'strategic portfolio management" label to their products without necessarily doing anything different from a functionality perspective to fit within the space. As a result, SPM vendor landscapes can compare work management, project management, demand management tools, and more. Users who want SPM functionality need to stay frosty to ensure they get what they pay for.

3. SPM tools may have a capacity blind spot.

The biggest barrier to getting things done and done well in modern enterprises is approving more work than you have the capacity to deliver. While SPM offerings can help with better demand management, not many of them cover the capacity side with the same level of improvement.

Does your organization need a strategic portfolio management tool?

Use Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment to gauge your readiness for SPM.

As noted in previous places in this deck, there is often a grey area in the market between project portfolio management tools and strategic portfolio management tools.
Some PPM tools offer SPM functionality, while some SPM tools avoid traditional PPM outcomes and stay at a higher, strategic level.
Depending on the scope of your PMO or portfolio optimization needs, you may need a tool that has just one, or both, of these capabilities.
Use Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment to help you assess whether you require a high-level strategy management tool, a more low-level project portfolio management tool, or a mix of both.

Download Info-Tech's Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment

1.1 Assess your needs

10 to 20 minutes

The Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment is a 41-question survey broken up into three parts: (1) PMO Type, (2) Features and Functionality, (3) Roles.
Go through each section using the provided dropdowns to help identify the orientation of your PMO, the feature and functionality needs of your office, as well as the roles whose needs will need to be serviced through the potential tool implementation.

This screenshot shows a sample output from the assessment. Based upon your inputs, you'll be grouped within three ranges:

Green: Based upon your inputs, you will benefit from an SPM tool.
Yellow: You may benefit from an SPM tool, but you may also require something more traditional. Clarify your requirements before proceeding.
Red: you're unlikely to leverage many of the benefits of an SPM tool at this time. Look for a more tactical solution.

Sample Output from the assessment tool

Input	Output
Understanding of existing project management, project portfolio management, and work management applications.	Recommendation on PPM/SPM tool type
Materials	Participants
Strategic Portfolio Management Needs Assessment tool	Portfolio managers and/or ePMO directors Project managers and product managers Business stakeholders

Explore the SPM vendor landscape

Use Info-Tech's application selection resources to help find the right solution for your organization.

If the analysis in the previous slides suggested you can benefit from an SPM tool, you can quick-start your vendor evaluation process with SoftwareReviews.

SoftwareReviews has extensive coverage of not just the SPM space, but of the project portfolio management (pictured to the top right) and project management spaces as well. So, from the tactical to the strategic, SoftwareReviews can help you find the right tools.

Further, as you settle in on a shortlist, you can begin your vendor analysis using our rapid application selection methodology (see framework on bottom right). For more information see our The Rapid Application Selection Framework blueprint.

Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework

Info-Tech's Rapid Application Selection Framework (RASF)

Related Info-Tech Research

Develop a Project Portfolio Management Strategy
Drive IT project throughput by throttling resource capacity.

Prepare an Actionable Roadmap for your PMO
Turn planning into action with a realistic PMO timeline.

Maintain an Organized Portfolio
Align portfolio management practices with COBIT (APO05: Manage Portfolio)

Bibliography

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Anthony, James. "95 Essential Project Management Statistics: 2022 Market Share & Data Analysis." Finance Online. 2022. Web. Accessed 21 March 2022

Banham, Craig. "Integrating strategic planning with portfolio management." Sopheon. Webinar. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Garfein, Stephen J. "Executive Guide to Strategic Portfolio Management: roadmap for closing the gap between strategy and results." PMI. Conference Paper. Oct. 2007. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Garfein, Stephen J. "Strategic Portfolio Management: A smart, realistic and relatively fast way to gain sustainable competitive advantage." PMI. Conference Paper. 2 March 2005. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Hontar, Yulia. "Strategic Portfolio Management." PPM Express. Blog 16 June 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Milsom, James. "6 Strategic Portfolio Management Trends for 2023." i-nexus. Blog. 25 Jan. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Milsom, James. "Strategic Portfolio Management 101." i-nexus. 8 Dec. 2021. Blog . Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

OnePlan, "Is Strategic Portfolio Management the Future of PPM?" YouTube. 17 Nov. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

OnePlan. "Strategic Portfolio Management for Enterprise Agile." YouTube. 27 May 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Piechota, Frank. "Strategic Portfolio Management: Enabling Successful Business Outcomes." Shibumi. Blog . 31 May 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

ServiceNow. "Strategic Portfolio Management—The Thing You've Been Missing." ServiceNow. Whitepaper. 2021. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Smith, Shepherd, "50+ Eye-Opening Strategic Planning Statistics" ClearPoint Strategy. Blog. 13 Sept. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

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Stickel, Robert. "What It Means to be Adaptive." OnePlan. Blog. 24 May 2021. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

UMT360. "What is Strategic Portfolio Management?" YouTube. Webinar. 22 Oct. 2020. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Wall, Caroline. "Elevating Strategy Planning through Strategic Portfolio Management." StrategyBlocks. Blog. 26 Feb. 2020. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Westmoreland, Heather. "What is Strategic Portfolio Management." Planview. Blog. 19 Oct 2002. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Wiltshire, Andrew. "Shibumi Included in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Portfolio Management for the 2nd Straight Year." Shibumi. Blog. 20 Apr. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

Ziehr, Paula. "Keep your eye on the prize: Align your IT investments with business strategy." SoftwareAG. Blog. 5 Jul. 2022. Accessed 6 Feb. 2023.

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