portfolio maturity case study

PPM Express

Integrated Project Portfolio Management

Introduction to Portfolio Management: a PPM Maturity Model

Portfolio management , while being a sophisticated instrument of business, addresses the immediate pains and needs of the business. Usually results in applying scheduling, budgeting, and other various project initiatives. Most businesses stay at this level, mostly not by design, but as a result of treating the issue as a means to an end, not as a strategy for growth. But if after seeing what scheduling alone can do for your business, you’ve decided to adopt a full-scale PPM Maturity Model, the question bears: Where do we go from here?

First and foremost, one must establish “a method to this madness”. Bear in mind that no organization can jump into high-level portfolio management if there is no firm foundation. Especially, if we’re talking growth and multiplication across the enterprise. The first thing to ensure is putting the essentials:

effective scheduling practices,
budget baseline ,
clear project scope ,
comprehensive toolkit in place.

After that, one should recognize, that with portfolio management “One step at a time” is the recipe for success. Several levels of PPM maturity are easily identified. Knowing where the organization is on this scale allows you to apply a suitable PPM strategy. A fitting PPM model, along with the fitting PPM tools, will ensure the fulfillment of your long-term goals and fit your needs. Jump too high too soon and the effort will crumble. Effective portfolio management is the result of bringing together the bond of the lifecycle and the PPM maturity levels. A PPM maturity model practice can cut the negative effects of poorly executed projects. It can also provide a roadmap to scale with the organization as they begin to move to more sophisticated methods of project execution. PPM assists an organization to maximize positive organizational and cultural changes. The maturity growth pattern helps sustain the adoption and tolerance of the new processes and methods.

Levels of PPM Maturity Model

The spectrum of how organizations can progress from ad-hoc task management to complete end-to-end portfolio management is divided into five levels.

Low PPM Maturity is never a conscious choice of an organization. Managing projects and initiatives at a basic level of maturity is usually an organic process, a reflex, a “what works” approach, that quickly becomes inadequate as the organization starts to grow beyond its original parameters. When you start gaining the understanding of “how to get things done” – an effective set of processes, tools, and technologies are usually adopted, resulting in improved efficiency. Tools frequently chosen at this stage of enterprise growth are often simple and not even so much “easy to use,” as they are familiar. For example, Excel spreadsheets are often used for everything – scheduling, budget management, and even time management sometimes. That is not the best way to deal with enterprise management, but that is what people just do. Of course, other tools can help you with managing “a young” enterprise, with a small team. For example – time tracking if task tracking is quite flexible on a small scale with Wrike, Wunderlist, and Trello and budgeting is simple with an old-school Peachtree. However, the moment your business grows out of the three-person game (the day you hire that fourth developer), you’d have to forsake the one tool shop.
The growth of PPM Project Management is the stage of the introduction of portfolio management, following the basic project management tools. This is the stage when a methodical, synchronized, and systematic approach provides a better means of managing projects, forming portfolios, interconnecting the tools, and assisting roles or user rights to management within a single system. Then comes the ability to analyze the information regarding all the aspects of every single project as a part of the whole. Not just the time frame of one individual project and resources allocated to the tasks.
Progressing Level of PPM Program Management is the next phase of growth. The need for a higher level of consolidation occurs, as the complexity of business interactions increases. At this stage, keeping track of the business life cycle “with your own two hands” becomes virtually impossible. This is when the integration of business intelligence metadata comes in handy. The idea of intertwining the data streams involved in your portfolio management needs to be threaded within a single structure. Stand-alone tools make it difficult, if not impossible, to consolidate or “roll up” data to support the needs of management, the planning, and forecasting capacity, business value planning, and even basic prioritization of work.
Progressing Level of PPM Portfolio Management is when “the point of no return” is behind you. Your portfolios are grouped and interconnected. Now you can initiate to facilitate the truly effective management and decision-making on a larger scale. Now you can finally “go for the stars,” in our case – strive to meet the strategic business objectives. “ Business Intelligence ” and reporting are the tools presenting current and accurate information to assist senior executives in making informed and managerial decisions. At this point, PPM is enabling organizations to take advantage of the visibility of “bottom-up,” as well as “top-down” analysis. If you’ve been smart about your portfolio management before reaching this maturity point – this stage will be a picnic for you. All the tools you need are intertwined, synchronized with your “master plan,” your time tracker, budgeting, and every project in your portfolios are like a gear wheel in a Swiss clock.
High Level of PPM Strategic Execution is the level of PPM maturity, where it becomes clear how the “mission, vision, values” statement is important for business. Long-range intentions of an organization influence portfolio strategy. When reaching this point, you can, or at least should, see not just the baseline aligned with the current budget curve, but the strategy and vision line up with business goals and priorities. At this point, your business needs and growth are addressed alongside project execution.

How PPM Express Makes a Difference on Each Maturity Model Level

Initial. PPM Express is a SaaS platform that enables organizations with a full portfolio and project visibility by aggregating project-related information across groups, portfolios, and systems. It can infuse your business with building blocks for orderly and strategy.
Emerging Discipline. PPM Express, being a lightweight portfolio management tool that suits both the immediate needs of your business and the strategic, more complex needs you will encounter while growing, matches the capacities of entities starting with 20 people, to the extent of large companies of hundreds to thousands of employees.
Initial Integration. PPM Express is most useful for organizations at this stage of the maturity model. Enterprises can fully use the transparency and interconnectivity, the solution provides. Adopting Such a tool has both strategic and tactical value, and can potentially be used to redefine markets and industries.
Effective Integration . At this point, you would need a tool that allows consistency. The strategy, the methodology, and management options for tasks, time-frames, and costs involved in the process. PPM Express is a tool that fits this stage perfectly.
Effective Innovation . PPM Express is good for an enterprise at this stage of development instead of a larger, slower, more complicated tool. It expands the functionality of earlier adopted scheduling and project management apps. It gives the user an intuitive interface to connect all projects, portfolios, and other internal data – terms, budgets, and performance indicators, into one wholesome picture. With advanced customization options, it becomes extremely adaptable to any market segment or business landscape. Plus, PPM Express is maintenance-free. Which makes it not just much more affordable, but also allows you to avoid spending any time managing environments.

By matching your current maturity level to the appropriate metrics, you will get an instant roadmap to “what comes next” and come one step closer to ensuring your business’s success. Technology plays a very important role in your timely maturation model. If you “jump” to using large server-level technology tools, you might fall, as a child does, while wearing his parents’ clothes. Drastic measures while adopting tools or methodologies in project and portfolio management inevitably fail at implementing stage.

Not mentioning the scenario, where your organization fails to adopt the implemented change. Your goal is to pick the tool “your size” to take advantage of its fullest capability. By pacing your growth via the PPM Maturity Model, you have an easy, transparent roadmap laid out. Use it to ensure cultural adoption and successful implementation of organizational change.

Building NHS Capability in Portfolio, Programme and Project Management

Portfolio management
Project management
Programme management

February 10, 2014 |

12 min read

All of our White Papers and Case Studies are subject to the following Terms of Use .

This case study reports on a pilot study carried out on the largest publicly funded healthcare provider, the NHS, to assess its portfolio, programme and project management at a crucial time of organizational change. P3M3® was used to evaluate three NHS organizations to assess their levels of organizational ability, highlight areas for development and strategize for an improved approach.

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1. Introduction

Introduction.

As the largest publicly funded health service in the world, the National Health Service (NHS) provides for the healthcare needs of everyone in the UK, free at the point of delivery. In England it caters for a population of 56 million, employs more than 1.3 million workers and deals with a million patients every 36 hours .

NHS organizations are going through a period of change and reform, facing the challenging task of delivering transformation while protecting quality, the effective use of resources and continuing productivity. The NHS needed a framework to manage and control the delivery of change across portfolio, programme and project management, with the aim of building its capabilities to manage the implementation of transformation objectives both effectively and efficiently.

Axelos’ Portfolio, Programme and Project Management Maturity Model (P3M3®) is designed to explore process and capability maturity in organizations as a basis for improvement. It recognizes the value of corporate portfolio management, and includes guidance from AXELOS publications such as Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®), to offer a thorough assessment of portfolio, programme and project management (P3M).

Research has shown that high-performing project organizations tend to have a systematic and consistently applied approach to projects. By assessing their portfolio, programme and project management maturity against the five maturity levels of P3M3 (see 4.1), organizations can understand how well their programme and project management processes are embedded into their corporate approach. This, in turn, provides an indication of their future performance. The NHS elected to evaluate P3M3 as a potential way forward: to measure its current levels of organizational ability, establish where improvement was needed and track the journey to achieving a higher level of ability.

A pilot study of P3M3 was set up across three NHS organizations that were facing change with different and significant challenges. The overall aim was to gain a deeper understanding of how the P3M3 maturity model could support portfolio, programme and project management improvement within healthcare organizations.

The initiative would assess how P3M3 could:

Provide a baseline of the organization’s current project management capability from which to measure improvement
Identify the organization’s strengths and weaknesses across existing skill sets
Help to prioritize project management improvement initiatives
Support the goal of project management maturity improvement.

The following three organizations were chosen for the pilot:

East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) which had recently established a Programme Management Office (PMO) and was keen to assess its project management maturity to set a baseline for the measurement of further improvements.
Yorkshire Ambulance Service (YAS) which was investing in organizational development to support its transition through to being authorized as a foundation trust. YAS looked to P3M3 for an independent assessment of the project management maturity level of its approach, and to highlight those areas where investment and performance improvement could give the most value. This helped set a benchmark from which YAS could establish the maturity level it aspired to reach, providing a gap analysis between current and target levels and the project management skills required to deliver projects to the desired standard.
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals (STH) which wanted to understand more about its current project management capability, in order to prioritize investment in specific areas of development and improvement.

3. The approach

The approach.

The P3M3 assessment was carried out using a moderated self-assessment approach with three key steps:

1. An initial assessment was carried out by each organization’s project staff using the online self-assessment questionnaire.

2. A workshop was held at all three organizations for staff to discuss the individual assessments and to derive the organization’s overall maturity level. These workshops were facilitated by members of the P3M development team in the Department of Health Informatics Directorate (DHID). The facilitators ’ independence enabled the workshop discussions and analysis to be moderated effectively.

3. Focus groups were held to look at each organization’s reflections and the lessons learned from the pilot, in order to draw out the applicability of P3M3 as a tool that could contribute to NHS service improvement.

Throughout the sessions, project professionals from all the organizations worked with P3M3 to assess current performance against the perspectives and attributes within the model.

4. Challenges

For YAS, not all projects were controlled through the programme and project management team, so there was a need to bring other project managers on board.
Setting appropriate target levels of maturity to aspire to (see 4.1), having established the levels of maturity for current project and programme management operations.
Achieving buy-in from the organization as a whole for the various elements and governance for delivering projects to the P3M3 guidance.

5. Successes

5.1 east midlands ambulance service.

At EMAS, the P3M3 initiative provided an objective and independent assessment that the trust could use to understand where it currently stood in terms of delivering transformational change programmes using project and programme management as strategic skills. The outputs from the workshops and focus groups were repositioned as core processes within the trust and presented to the EMAS Transformation Board who agreed an action plan that resulted from the pilot. It made five recommendations:

Embed a standardized project management process throughout the organization. EMAS’s current processes had been based on visits to other trusts to understand best practice, and that was mixed with internal processes based on elements of PRINCE2 ® .
Use a standardized set of documents.
Put in place a continuing professional development programme for regular training events on project management.
Integrate training (which should be primarily face-to-face and based on an individual’s level of project management experience) with PRINCE2 training.
Improve the integration of project management within the wider business planning cycle.

In addition, a P3M3 reassessment was scheduled to measure progress and provide feedback into further development plans.

5.2 Yorkshire Ambulance Service

The P3M3 assessment provided the YAS project management team with an authoritative and impartial assessment that could be used for discussions with executive management on the actions, commitment and resources that would be needed to achieve the target project delivery level. YAS is using the findings to transform practices which will help the foundation trust achieve its four strategic aims:

Continuously improving patient care By improving its delivery of projects, YAS can improve levels of patient care and experience.
High performing Improved project management maturity will help YAS to raise performance levels.
Always learning The detailed analysis of all constituent elements of the maturity assessment identified the gaps between current performance and targets. It also helped the foundation trust to gain an understanding of all the requirements for the effective delivery of project management. This could then be fed into professional development plans for individual project managers.
Delivering value for money Applying P3M3 consistently will provide efficiencies across all delivery processes.

5.3 Sheffield Teaching Hospitals

For Sheffield Teaching Hospitals, the P3M3 assessment provided a thorough audit of the component processes within portfolio, programme and project management. STH also found that this process was useful in helping it focus on specific areas; in particular, enhancing risk management. As a result the organization has:

Assessed how well it performed within each process perspective and has taken steps to embed the processes as part of the development plan
Identified those areas where investment in improvement will offer the most benefit
Prioritized investment, focusing on areas where new or enhanced skills development is most needed and will prove most effective
Introduced an organization-wide professional development programme that is linked to the annual appraisal process.

6. Conclusion

Sarah Briggs of the Department of Health, Informatics and Policy and Planning Directorate explains the results from the pilot: ‘These three organizations had a good level of project management maturity and were advanced in the sense that they wanted to make further improvements to their organizational project management capability. The P3M3 model and process were really useful to help them identify where improvements could be made.’

Briggs is confident that P3M3 has a lot to offer NHS organizations: ‘It encourages a really systematic approach, which helps to select, prioritize and manage the total workload involved in delivering transformational change.’

The pilot study across these three very different organizations demonstrated how the P3M3 assessment could provide an objective evaluation of a health organization’s project management maturity and so feed information into the development of an improvement action plan. With the P3M3 maturity model these organizations achieved a comprehensive assessment of their existing capabilities and organizational processes. Using this as baseline for improvement, they have been able to prioritize according to the impact of development in any given area. For an industry facing significant transformational change, this provides the critical information needed to implement and sustain effective improvements.

By using a maturity assessment model, the NHS can be confident that every aspect of current best practice has been incorporated. P3M3 includes expert guidance from the official Best Management Practice publications from the Cabinet Office, covering all aspects of portfolio, programme and project management.

7. The future

The Department of Health continues to implement project and programme management standards to support the successful delivery of large-scale change in the NHS. P3M capability is being developed throughout the NHS to ensure consistency and visibility across financial and quality goals. The P3M programme is designed to build capability for the delivery of successful programmes and projects through a collaborative community that shares best practices.

An NHS P3M Resource Centre has been developed to provide information on P3M3, together with other materials, tools and guidance that are essential to the successful delivery of transformational change.

'P3M3 has provided the baseline from which we can develop and consistently strengthen our capability across all areas of portfolio, programme and project management,' Briggs confirms.

Steps are being taken to use P3M3 more widely across the NHS for current, merging and emerging organizations.

A national study is currently being undertaken, using elements of P3M3 to provide an indicative assessment of project management maturity in the NHS. Work is also being undertaken to support the accessibility of P3M3 to the NHS, through the development of simple and more detailed self-assessment spreadsheets.

There is a large amount of change activity currently taking place and organizations are gearing up to deliver this change. Many NHS organizations are looking to the P3M programme for practices and structures to assist with the delivery of their change agenda. P3M is being used to help organizations to baseline their current practices and put in place improvement plans to create the right environment to deliver change.

Note: this case study was first published in April 2012.

8. Download

Building NHS Capability using P3M3

Project, programme and portfolio maturity: a case study of Australian Federal Government

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the notion of maturity assessment and maturity models more broadly and goes on to examine the findings from the assessments of project, programme and portfolio maturity undertaken across Australian Government agencies. Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis was performed to determine the level of maturity that best represents the Australian Federal Government agencies as a whole. The unit of analysis in this study is the agencies overall scores in each sub-model across the seven perspectives of the portfolio, programme and project management maturity model (P3M3) maturity model. Findings – This study has identified a number of interesting findings. First, the practices of project, programme and portfolio across the dataset practiced independently of each other. Second, benefits management and strategy alignment practices are generally poor across Australian Government agencies. Third, programme management practices are the most immature. Finally, the results showed a high sensitivity to the “generic attributes” of roles and responsibilities, experience, capability development, planning and estimating and scrutiny and review. Research limitations/implications – All data used in this analysis are secondary data collected from individual Australian Government agencies. The data were collected by accredited consultants following a common data collection method and using a standard template to ensure a consistent approach. Practical implications – The study poses some implications for practice, particularly given the context of Australian Federal Government agencies current plans and action to improve organisational maturity. The study suggests that benefits management processes at the project level and benefits management, governance and stakeholder management processes at the programme level should be an area of focus for improvement. Originality/value – This study is the first attempt to systematically review the data collected through such an assessment and in particular identify the findings and the implications at a whole of government level.

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Project, programme and portfolio maturity: A case study of Australian Federal Government

Institute for Governance & Policy Analysis
Information Systems

Research output : Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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10.1108/IJMPB-08-2013-0034

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Federal Government Business & Economics 100%
Government Agencies Business & Economics 99%
Benefits Management Business & Economics 82%
Maturity Business & Economics 82%
Maturity Model Business & Economics 67%
Program Management Business & Economics 45%
Management Process Business & Economics 34%
Stakeholder Management Business & Economics 23%

T1 - Project, programme and portfolio maturity

T2 - A case study of Australian Federal Government

AU - Young, Michael

AU - Young, Raymond

AU - Romero Zapata, Julio

N2 - Purpose – This paper aims to examine the notion of maturity assessment and maturity models more broadly and goes on to examine the findings from the assessments of project, programme and portfolio maturity undertaken across Australian Government agencies. Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis was performed to determine the level of maturity that best represents the Australian Federal Government agencies as a whole. The unit of analysis in this study is the agencies overall scores in each sub-model across the seven perspectives of the portfolio, programme and project management maturity model (P3M3) maturity model. Findings – This study has identified a number of interesting findings. First, the practices of project, programme and portfolio across the dataset practiced independently of each other. Second, benefits management and strategy alignment practices are generally poor across Australian Government agencies. Third, programme management practices are the most immature. Finally, the results showed a high sensitivity to the “generic attributes” of roles and responsibilities, experience, capability development, planning and estimating and scrutiny and review. Research limitations/implications – All data used in this analysis are secondary data collected from individual Australian Government agencies. The data were collected by accredited consultants following a common data collection method and using a standard template to ensure a consistent approach. Practical implications – The study poses some implications for practice, particularly given the context of Australian Federal Government agencies current plans and action to improve organisational maturity. The study suggests that benefits management processes at the project level and benefits management, governance and stakeholder management processes at the programme level should be an area of focus for improvement. Originality/value – This study is the first attempt to systematically review the data collected through such an assessment and in particular identify the findings and the implications at a whole of government level.

AB - Purpose – This paper aims to examine the notion of maturity assessment and maturity models more broadly and goes on to examine the findings from the assessments of project, programme and portfolio maturity undertaken across Australian Government agencies. Design/methodology/approach – A statistical analysis was performed to determine the level of maturity that best represents the Australian Federal Government agencies as a whole. The unit of analysis in this study is the agencies overall scores in each sub-model across the seven perspectives of the portfolio, programme and project management maturity model (P3M3) maturity model. Findings – This study has identified a number of interesting findings. First, the practices of project, programme and portfolio across the dataset practiced independently of each other. Second, benefits management and strategy alignment practices are generally poor across Australian Government agencies. Third, programme management practices are the most immature. Finally, the results showed a high sensitivity to the “generic attributes” of roles and responsibilities, experience, capability development, planning and estimating and scrutiny and review. Research limitations/implications – All data used in this analysis are secondary data collected from individual Australian Government agencies. The data were collected by accredited consultants following a common data collection method and using a standard template to ensure a consistent approach. Practical implications – The study poses some implications for practice, particularly given the context of Australian Federal Government agencies current plans and action to improve organisational maturity. The study suggests that benefits management processes at the project level and benefits management, governance and stakeholder management processes at the programme level should be an area of focus for improvement. Originality/value – This study is the first attempt to systematically review the data collected through such an assessment and in particular identify the findings and the implications at a whole of government level.

KW - Australia Government

KW - Organisational PM capability

KW - Project maturity model

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84958550599&partnerID=8YFLogxK

UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/project-programme-portfolio-maturity-case-study-australian-federal-government

U2 - 10.1108/IJMPB-08-2013-0034

DO - 10.1108/IJMPB-08-2013-0034

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:84958550599

SN - 1753-8378

JO - International Journal of Managing Projects in Business

JF - International Journal of Managing Projects in Business

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Please note you do not have access to teaching notes, robust project portfolio management: capability evolution and maturity.

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business

ISSN : 1753-8378

Article publication date: 18 January 2013

The purpose of this paper is to increase understanding of project portfolio management (PPM) capability evolution, in order to guide the implementation and ongoing development of robust capabilities.

Design/methodology/approach

This research adopts a dynamic capabilities perspective and draws on organizational learning theory to investigate the path‐dependent nature of PPM implementation and development. It employs a multiple‐case study of six organizations.

Each of the case organizations reported a high level of evolution and change within their PPM capabilities, both purposeful and unintended. Potential “fragilities” are identified, such as the emergence of a “success trap” that inhibits explorative innovation and difficulties in stopping poor projects to reallocate resources. Based on findings from the literature and the multiple‐case study, a capability maturity model is proposed to assist in the development of robust PPM capabilities that will continue to evolve and stay relevant in dynamic environments.

Research limitations/implications

The research is based on six organizations and may not be representative of all environments. The proposed maturity model has only been used in initial trials to evaluate capability maturity, and its use in guiding capability development has not been studied. Further research is required to test and evolve the maturity model.

Practical implications

The maturity model will be of interest to managers as a tool to analyze PPM maturity and identify areas for further development or to guide new PPM implementations.

Originality/value

The proposed maturity model extends existing maturity models by incorporating organizational learning capabilities, by recognizing antecedents for maturity stages that build upon other capabilities, and by including steps to recognize and avoid potential “fragilities” and to ensure robust PPM performance over time.

Learning organizations
Project management
Corporate strategy
Project portfolio management
Capability maturity model
Dynamic capabilities
Exploration
Exploitation

Killen, C.P. and Hunt, R.A. (2013), "Robust project portfolio management: capability evolution and maturity", International Journal of Managing Projects in Business , Vol. 6 No. 1, pp. 131-151. https://doi.org/10.1108/17538371311291062

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A portfolio maturity model is a tool to assess the level of sophistication in the processes, tools, and people involved in managing the project portfolio process. Portfolio maturity levels represent the level of sophistication around portfolio management processes, tools, and people. It helps identify shortcomings in PPM processes (current state) and can be used to establish improvement goals to reach a better future state. Measuring your organization’s portfolio maturity is critical for the long-term success of strategic portfolio management. Organizations that do not periodically assess their maturity and progress toward maturity goals will fail to realize the benefits of project portfolio management. Having worked with many Fortune 500 companies, I wish I got a dollar every time someone told me “we’ll get there.” Unfortunately, the statistics imply a sad ending, “you won’t get there”.

Why Measuring Portfolio Maturity Is Important

According to Gartner, around 80% of PMO’s are level 1 or 2 maturity. Let that sink in. Unless you know you are an elite PMO, you are part of the 80%. In fact, without actively maturing your organization’s portfolio processes, you will remain in that 80% for many years. Organization’s simply don’t “get there” by the passage of time; it takes active work to achieve desired improvement targets to arrive at better portfolio management processes.

Managing portfolio maturity is a critical process for ensuring that organizations develop the right amount of process based on the needs of the organization. In this way, portfolio implementations are “right-sized”, which means that no processes are implemented until needed by the organization. Over-engineering the portfolio management process too early can create an unnecessary weight on the organization and can cripple an implementation. Using a maturity model is a great way of balancing the needs of the organization with useful process development.

Portfolio Maturity and PPM Software

Acuity PPM is hyper-focused on this concept of organizational maturity because we have seen many companies fail to adopt and utilize traditional PPM software . As we have discussed in a previous post, most Project Management Offices (PMO’s) never fully utilize the functionality of their PPM software because of their current capability maturity level. The overwhelming majority of PMO’s are new or have slowly matured and can only utilize a limited amount of functionality. We firmly believe that companies should only pay for what they need, not pay for what they don’t need (click here to learn about the tragic reality of most PPM software).

At the same time, portfolio management maturity models can be a great enabler in making process improvements. Higher maturity often translates into a greater realization of the benefits of PPM. Portfolio management maturity models are very useful for assessing the current state of the portfolio processes and how to arrive at a higher level of maturity. Yet, we do not advocate maturing simply for the sake of maturing, rather we encourage customers to identify their target maturity state.

Measuring your organization’s portfolio maturity is critical for the long-term success of strategic portfolio management. Organizations that do not periodically assess their maturity and progress toward maturity goals will fail to realize the benefits of project portfolio management.

However, identifying the future state of portfolio management processes is rarely discussed in portfolio management literature. Companies simply set out on the PPM journey hoping to reach the higher levels of maturity (reminder: hope is not a plan). Actually, most organizations do not need to strive for level 5 maturity (an elusive and mostly theoretical state of maturity to say the least). However, if your organization can make a determination of where your portfolio processes need to be within 2-3 years, you could establish a legitimate competitive advantage. Having this understanding would give your organization a realistic target for improvement. [ FEATURE : portfolio management maturity assessment tool ]

Critics of maturity models tend to point out that many companies blindly follow a maturity model without any regard for developing value-added capabilities. We agree that companies should not try to “mature” for maturity sake, but maturity models help identify opportunities for developing valuable capabilities and processes that help the organization drive more business value. We believe that maturity models help organizations take an objective view of their current capabilities and identify opportunities to improve and increase business value.

Project Criticality and Portfolio Magnitude to Inform Portfolio Maturity

Generally speaking, you can make an initial determination of your target maturity based on two important factors: project criticality and portfolio magnitude/size. Project criticality refers to the importance of projects to the organization and includes factors such as: driving growth and revenue for the company, high strategic importance, projects where the risk of failure would impact the company and/or where the risk of not doing the project is high, and critical dependencies to other high value projects. Portfolio magnitude refers to the size of the portfolio in terms of: total portfolio budget, number of project resources, breadth of impact to the company (local, regional, national, international), etc.

In order to make a realistic assessment of future state portfolio processes, the portfolio management team first needs to make an honest assessment of project criticality by asking some basic questions:

How much of our portfolio is comprised of operational projects compared to strategic projects?
How much of the company’s growth plans are tied up with the projects in our portfolio?
If our biggest projects failed, would this impact our P&L or need to be reported to the board of directors?

The chart below conceptually depicts how to identify the organization’s target maturity after assessing project criticality (along the x-axis) and portfolio size/magnitude (along the y-axis). Project portfolios that are smaller or operational in nature and do not include mission critical (or ‘bet the company’) initiatives will often find a sweet spot around level 2 or 3. Project portfolios that significantly fuel the growth of the company and comprise a significant budget should aim to arrive at a strong level 3 or level 4 maturity. In rare cases, due to large portfolio size and mission critical projects, some companies should strive for level 5 maturity.

Portfolio Maturity Levels

Our discussion around portfolio maturity levels is based on the capability maturity model from CMMI Institute. In this model there are five basic levels of maturity from 1-5. A full assessment of portfolio maturity would have a number of criteria to evaluate, but we can provide some basic characteristics of each level below. In addition to evaluating project criticality and portfolio magnitude, each organization should also consider at what level of caliber they need to perform at in order to be successful.

Level 1—INITIATION (“Ad Hoc”)

The key word for level 1 is “inconsistency”. No standards exist at this level, many project and portfolio processes do not exist at this level, and what does exist is applied in an ad hoc way. What little processes are in place are carried out in an ad hoc fashion.

Level 2—DEVELOPING (“Emerging Discipline”)

At level 2, some standardization of processes exist, although most processes are still immature. Nevertheless, some processes are defined and documented, and the organization is getting some benefit from portfolio management. At this stage, the organization should have visibility of all major projects in a central tool. The primary focus is on getting basic governance standards and processes set up for reviewing project requests. Basic prioritization may begin at this point with rudimentary understanding of resource capacity management.

Level 3—DEFINED (“Responsive”)

Level 3 is a significant step for the organization as it regularly and effectively uses portfolio mechanics. Processes are well defined and established in the organization, with process documentation made freely available to the organization. Level 3 signifies the real shift from a single project view to an aggregate portfolio view. In the previous two levels, even though there is visibility of the portfolio as a whole, emphasis was placed on individual projects. By level 3, organizations better understand how projects interact with each other. Governance bodies seek to understand the implications to the portfolio based on specific project decisions, the key question being “what will this do to the portfolio?”

Level 4—MANAGED (“Proactive”)

Level 4 marks the advance of the organization in its use of portfolio management. Here governance bodies begin to utilize optimization techniques to drive even greater value to the portfolio with little or no extra cost. Project Management Offices (PMO’s) are advanced as well, enabling the organization to collect higher quality data that can be used for various optimization techniques, such as resource capacity optimization. The organization feeds the portfolio system regularly with accurate and up-to-date project information. Users of the portfolio system feel very comfortable with the tool and can use many of the advanced features. Prioritization as a project selection tool has been replaced by efficient frontier analysis. Schedule optimization is used to unlock even greater value from the portfolio.

Level 5—OPTIMIZED (“Advanced”)

The key difference between level 4 and 5 is that at level 5, there is so much organizational rigor and process discipline that the organization proactively uses optimization techniques, and does so with little or no resistance. Quality data is constantly fed into the portfolio system. Several enterprise systems are integrated with the portfolio system making it a critical system for the performance of the organization. Senior management from across the company rely upon project and portfolio reports for making organizational decisions.

Again, it is not necessary to target level 4 or 5, but companies in highly competitive and profitable industries (such as tech) should seriously consider bolstering their portfolio management processes to improve strategic execution. Let’s look at a quick example.

Portfolio Maturity Case Study

In April of 2010, Apple released the first iPad. Not wanting to be left behind, Hewlett-Packard purchased the company, Palm for $1.2 billion dollars. It was said, “Palm’s innovative operating system provides an ideal platform to expand HP’s mobility strategy…Advances in mobility are offering significant opportunities, and HP intends to be a leader in this market.” Near the end of 2010, Léo Apotheker was named the CEO and President of Hewlett-Packard. He was known as a strategic thinker with a passion for technology, wide-reaching global experience and proven operational discipline – “he is exactly what we were looking for in a CEO…We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy…”. However, Hewlett-Packard was unable to execute its mobile strategy and failed to compete with Apple in the mobile space. 2011 turned out to be such a bad year for HP that they even announced that they would get out of the PC market, an industry they had dominated for years. Moreover, in less than 12 months as CEO, Léo Apotheker was fired . “The problem with Apotheker wasn’t lack of vision as much as a lack of execution and communication”.

Numerous factors (including poor leadership) contributed to HP’s demise in the PC and mobile markets. It would be an oversimplification to suggest that weak portfolio maturity alone led to HP’s exit from the mobile market. Yet, there are several important points to be made from this case:

Companies only need to strive for higher levels of maturity if they compete against very strong companies
In order to compete with a company like Apple, a company must have championship caliber strategic execution capabilities (level 5).
A company could have a good product and do a good job of executing its strategy (level 3), but if its competitors are even stronger at execution, that company could easily fail.

Portfolio Maturity Assessments

A thorough portfolio maturity assessment would include the following areas:

Generación de Ideas : Es el proceso de generación y afinación de una lista de nuevas ideas de proyectos. El objetivo es recopilar las mejores ideas de la organización para generar proyectos de mayor calidad.
Propuesta de trabajo : Se refiere a los pasos para desarrollar una propuesta de proyecto y llevarla a la junta de gobierno para una decisión de ir / no ir.
Gated Governance Framework – a governance structure to evaluate, authorize, and monitor projects as they pass through the project lifecycle.
Priorización : Es el proceso de evaluación del proyecto en función a criterios de decisión que facilitará la asignación de recursos a los proyectos más importantes y la definición del momento más adecuado para iniciar su ejecución.
Optimización del Portafolio de Proyectos : Se refiere a las técnicas de optimización utilizadas para identificar la agrupación óptima de proyectos que maximizan el valor del Portafolio de Proyectos ajustada al riesgo y a un presupuesto autorizado.
Planificación del Portafolio de Proyectos : Se refiere al proceso para optimizar la secuencia y el tiempo de los proyectos aprobados en función a las limitaciones y dependencias de los recursos.
Planificación de la capacidad de recursos : Se refiere al proceso de comparar la utilización futura de los recursos necesarios para la ejecución del proyecto con la capacidad disponible para hacer el trabajo.
Gestión del riesgo del Portafolio de Proyectos : Evalúa la naturaleza del riesgo de los proyectos y gestiona los riesgos del Portafolio de Proyectos.
Comunicación del Portafolio de Proyectos : Incluye los procesos para comunicar todos los aspectos del proyecto y el progreso del Portafolio de Proyectos.
Informes y análisis del Portafolio de Proyectos : Incluye los procesos para analizar e informar sobre el valor y el progreso del Portafolio de Proyectos.
Gestión del valor del Portafolio de Proyectos : Incluiye los procesos para evaluar, medir y rastrear los beneficios del proyecto a nivel del Portafolio de Proyectos.
Monitoreo de proyectos : Incluye los procesos para medir y rastrear la salud y el desempeño del proyecto.
Gobierno del Portafolio : Se refiere al proceso de toma de decisiones para seleccionar y priorizar el trabajo del proyecto.

Based on the current state maturity assessment, a future-state roadmap should be developed that highlights key process improvement areas across a 1-3 year period of time. Measuring the current portfolio maturity level is only the first step. Without ongoing concerted effort, organizations will not reach their targeted maturity. Acuity PPM can help you with both your current and future state maturity assessments. Contact us today.

VIDEO: How to Use a Portfolio Management (PPM) Maturity Model

Tim is a project and portfolio management consultant with 15 years of experience working with the Fortune 500. He is an expert in maturity-based PPM and helps PMO Leaders build and improve their PMO to unlock more value for their company. He is one of the original PfMP’s (Portfolio Management Professionals) and a public speaker at business conferences and PMI events. LEARN MORE

What is a portfolio management maturity model?

A portfolio management maturity model is a tool used to assess the quality and sophistication of various portfolio management capabilities including: ideation, work intake, Stage-Gate, prioritization, portfolio optimization, portfolio planning, resource capacity planning, portfolio risk management, portfolio communication, portfolio reporting and analytics, portfolio value management, project monitoring, and portfolio governance.

Why should I measure project portfolio maturity?

What are the five levels of a portfolio management maturity model.

Level 1—INITIATION (“Ad Hoc”): no standards exist at this level. Level 2—DEVELOPING (“Emerging Discipline”): some standardization of processes exist, although most processes are still immature. Level 3—DEFINED (“Responsive”): Processes are well defined and established in the organization, with process documentation made freely available to the organization. Level 4—MANAGED (“Proactive”): governance bodies begin to utilize optimization techniques to drive even greater value to the portfolio with little or no extra cost. Level 5—OPTIMIZED (“Advanced”): at level 5, there is so much organizational rigor and process discipline that the organization proactively uses optimization techniques, and does so with little or no resistance.

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The disjointed nature of their teams, coupled with the lack of a centralized system for tracking legislative changes, contributed to inefficiencies and compliance risks. Without a comprehensive solution in place, the automotive manufacturer struggled to maintain alignment across projects and anticipate the impacts of delays or changes in status.

The company implemented SharpCloud, a connected strategic portfolio management platform, to address its challenges hollistically. SharpCloud enabled the manufacturer to build cohesive narratives per team area, share common data, and visualize the interdependencies between projects. Additionally, SharpCloud's scenario planning capabilities allowed them to anticipate future developments and align its strategies accordingly. By leveraging SharpCloud, the business created a centralized hub for collaboration, compliance management, and decision-making processes.

SharpCloud facilitated better alignment, collaboration and sharing of data and insights among the business teams. Additionally, the manufacturer proactively managed compliance by tracking legislative changes and making timely adjustments across its product portfolio, thus mitigating compliance risks. By aggregating data into portfolios and utilizing scenario planning features, the manufacturer gained valuable insights for more informed and strategic decision-making. Furthermore, the centralized platform for portfolio management streamlined processes, reducing inefficiencies, and boosting overall productivity.

“ SharpCloud is the only platform I have seen that has the ability to solve difficult project challenges quickly and help identify blockers to delivery. It really is a cutting-edge use of roadmapping and visualization technology ”

Key objectives

How SharpCloud empowered a global automotive giant to optimize and streamline their portfolio to be more profitable and agile

The manufacturer needed a solution to effectively map out their diverse portfolio, which spans across different functional areas. They sought to integrate technologies shared across these areas and ensure alignment with changing legislations to maintain compliance across products, modules, and interfaces.

Understanding and adhering to evolving legislations was crucial for the organization. They required a system to track legislative changes and ensure timely adjustments across their product lines. This proactive approach aimed to prevent compliance issues and align all elements before the legislation's implementation.

The manufacturer faced challenges with disconnected teams that were working on overlapping projects. They sought a connected solution to streamline collaboration and data sharing among teams. By utilizing SharpCloud, they aimed to build cohesive narratives per team area and share common data to identify potential impacts of delays or status changes across projects.

Global automotive manufacturer managing complex portfolio across various functional areas
Disconnected teams working on overlapping projects
Need for streamlined collaboration, compliance, and improved decision-making processes
Disjointed teams and lack of centralized system for tracking legislative changes
Inefficiencies and compliance risks due to disconnected teams and data
Struggle to maintain alignment across projects and anticipate impacts of delays or changes in status

By implementing SharpCloud, a connected strategic portfolio management platform, the company were able to address its challenges holistically. Many teams operated in silos, yet their work often overlapped. Leveraging SharpCloud's connected solution, teams could build out narratives for each area and seamlessly share data. This facilitated visibility into the impact of delays or changes in one project on others across the organization. Moreover, SharpCloud's scenario planning functionalities facilitated anticipation of future developments, enabling strategic alignment. By consolidating data into portfolios, the business established a centralized hub for collaboration, compliance management, and decision-making processes.

Improved collaboration: SharpCloud facilitated better alignment and collaboration among the business teams, enabling them to share common data and insights.
Proactive compliance management: The manufacturer could proactively track legislative changes and ensure timely adjustments across its product portfolio, mitigating compliance risks.
Enhanced decision-making: By aggregating data into portfolios and utilizing scenario planning features, the manufacturer gained valuable insights for more informed and strategic decision-making.
Efficiency gains: With a centralized platform for portfolio management, the manufacturer streamlined its processes, reducing inefficiencies and enhancing overall productivity.

Other case studies

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Reporting in Agile Portfolio Management: Routines, Metrics and Artefacts to Maintain an Effective Oversight

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First Online: 17 May 2018
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Christoph Johann Stettina 9 , 10 , 11 &
Lennard Schoemaker 10

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 314))

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International Conference on Agile Software Development

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In a world where the speed of change is faster than ever, a growing number of organisations adopts Agile Portfolio Management (APM) to connect their agile teams to business strategy. A domain which has been little explored in literature and professional frameworks. Based on 14 interviews conducted in 10 large European organisations, in this paper we report the preliminary results of our study on reporting routines, artefacts and metrics in Agile Portfolio Management. In our findings we discuss the three generic domains of reporting responsibility and the novel types of reporting routines found in practice. Further, we use the concept of boundary objects to recommend which types of artefacts are effective for which reporting routines.

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Achieving Agility in IT Project Portfolios – A Systematic Literature Review

Exploring the Tensions between Software Project Portfolio Management and Agile Methods: A Research in Progress Paper

Agile Project Management Based on Data Analysis for Information Management Systems

Agile portfolio management
Agile reporting
PPM reporting

1 Introduction

In a world of ever-faster emerging societal and technological advancements, companies need to timely adjust their portfolio of products and services - to adapt to rapidly changing market demand, and to cope with an increasingly entrepreneurial competition [ 1 ]. Agile Portfolio Management (APM), as a potential solution, defines the heartbeat in connecting strategy to operations through the selection, prioritisation and review of initiatives an organisation executes. Still, for large organisations with strong product and service development capabilities with 50 to 500 teams, managing and keeping a meaningful overview of their ventures is a challenging task.

Agile portfolio management is associated with the capability for a swift change of priorities across initiatives based on the faster delivery of intermediate outcomes and a better collaboration in and across teams [ 1 ]. Comparing to traditional project management approaches, agile methods put a focus on understanding the value created in context and rely heavily on direct communication and frequent reviews of intermediate results with users. It follows the ethos of the Agile Manifesto ‘Working software is the primary measure of progress.’ [ 2 ].

To provide the right amount of oversight and select the right reporting approach is crucial for a successful and ‘agile’ connection of strategy to operations, especially due to the focus on the value delivered. Authors like Müller et al. [ 3 ] point out how project and programme reporting influences the performance of portfolio management. Yet, current literature pays little attention to creating and managing oversight in portfolios in such dynamic environments [ 4 ]. Furthermore, while the origins of portfolio management lie in managing portfolios of financial assets, project selection and reporting often still follows predominantly ad hoc or financial metrics [ 5 ], or considers projects in isolation [ 4 ]. How to maintain a meaningful oversight effectively when the knowledge expands towards the boundaries of a dozen teams remains a question.

In this paper we present the findings of our study on reporting approaches, artefacts and metrics in large organisations applying agile methods within their portfolios. The remainder of the paper is organised as follows: First, we discuss the gap in existing literature and formulate our question. Second, we describe our approach and descriptive results. Then, we reflect on our findings in light of existing literature.

2 Related Work

In the following subsections, we will provide an overview of the existing literature on Portfolio Management (PPM) and Agile Portfolio Management (APM) along with the reporting of portfolio management, and include an evaluation of the current gap in the literature.

2.1 Connecting Organisational Strategy to IT Development Initiatives Through Agile Portfolio Management

Portfolio management deals with the question which initiatives an organisation should pursue and how to connect those to strategic goals. Cooper et al. [ 5 ] define the goals of portfolio management as follows: (1) to maximise return on R&D and technology; (2) To maintain the business’s competitive position; (3) to properly allocate scarce resources; (4) to forge the link between project selection and business strategy; (5) to achieve a stronger focus; (6) To yield the right balance of projects and investments; (7) to communicate project priorities both vertically and horizontally within the organisation; (8) to provide greater objectivity in project selection.

Agile Portfolio Management differs from traditional Project Portfolio management as it succeeds agile software development frameworks, while traditional Project Portfolio Management (PPM) is based on principles to manage financial portfolios. Agile methods such as Scrum challenge portfolio and programme reporting in existing, especially large, organisations due to a faster and more frequent delivery of intermediate results, different roles, and a different mindset [ 1 ]. The increased delivery of intermediate results requires faster feedback loops in domains outside individual projects, such as portfolio management [ 1 , 6 ]. This challenges the traditional view on project portfolio management which, once selected, focuses on managing projects in isolation [ 4 ].

In a first cross-case study comparing the application of agile portfolio management in 14 large organisations to existing literature and professional frameworks, Stettina and Hörz [ 1 ] point at the characteristics of agile portfolio management as (1) transparency of resources and work items, improving trust, decision-making, and resource allocation; (2) collaboration, close collaboration based on routinised interaction and artefacts enabling frequent feedback-loops across the domains; (3) commitment to strategically managed portfolios; (4) team orientation, removing unrest in resource allocation and building capabilities in teams.

While there is an extensive body of knowledge on Project Portfolio Management, existing literature pays little attention to portfolios of initiatives in agile and dynamic environments [ 4 ]. The origins of PPM in financial models can be still traced to a dominance of financial metrics and indices in portfolio decision-making [ 7 ]. Cooper et al. [ 5 ] found that the use of financial models alone yields poorer portfolio results. They advise the application of strategic methods and scoring approaches compared to financial and quantitative indicators only. Cooper et al. [ 8 ] describe two main approaches to project portfolio review in new product development: a (1) ‘gates dominate’, and a (2) ‘portfolio dominates’ approach. In a ‘gate-dominated’ project portfolio management approach, senior management will evaluate individual projects within a portfolio and will make Go/Kill decisions at these gates. In a portfolio review dominated approach, the projects within a portfolio are competing with each other.

2.2 Maintaining a Meaningful and Effective Oversight Practice Across Initiatives Pursued Throughout a Portfolio of Agile Teams

Reporting is considered to be one of the main process areas in portfolio management and is positively associated with portfolio success [ 3 ].

Empirical literature on reporting in agile portfolio management is scarce. Existing contributions discuss reporting as providing visibility across projects [ 9 ]. Oversight [ 10 ] and metrics [ 11 ] are frequently mentioned as two of the domains affected by implementing agile portfolio management. Characteristics associated with the practice include transparency of resources and work items and close collaboration based on routinised interaction and artefacts enabling frequent feedback-loops [ 1 , 6 ]

Metrics are generally considered to be an integral part of reporting, contributing to the success of the entire portfolio. Vähäniitty [ 6 ] points out that performance metrics and incentives should not encourage local optimisation within a portfolio. In practitioner literature, Leffingwell [ 12 ] and Krebs [ 13 ] provide practical recommendations for different metric types. In his book, Krebs [ 13 ] describes three types of metrics as (1) progress, (2) team morale, and (3) quality (compare [ 13 ] p. 67). Leffingwell [ 12 ] describes (1) employee engagement, (2) customer satisfaction, (3) productivity, (4) agility, (5) time to market, (6) quality, (7) partner health (compare [ 12 ] p. 308). While existing literature points at possible metrics and artefacts to embed those, empirical evidence is lacking.

Project Management Offices (PMO), or Project Portfolio Management Offices (PPMO), traditionally serve as a supporting function, providing oversight across the pursued initiatives across the portfolio, e.g. by collecting project information and updates from respective teams and preparing it for management. Tengshe and Noble [ 11 ] describe the changing role of a PMO when adopting agile methods, by providing means of continuous improvement, training and coaching across projects and portfolios. Rautiainen et al. [ 9 ] describe their case of setting up a portfolio of agile teams with the help of a PMO to provide transparency, helping to reduce duplicate projects and aligning projects to strategy.

More recently, software tooling is proposed to support automated reports across agile teams in programmes and portfolios [ 6 ]. However, an empirical perspective beyond individual cases on what reporting practices are applied in practice and the interaction of practices with reporting artefacts and metrics is missing.

2.3 Taking the Perspective of Knowledge Boundaries to Understand Effective Reporting in Agile Portfolio Management

Reporting practices can be, analogously to documentation, considered as a knowledge conversion practice [ 14 ]. While there is little academic literature on reporting in agile portfolio management, there is a growing number of contributions on documentation and knowledge transfer across agile teams (compare [ 15 , 16 ]).

Project reporting and reviewing relies on knowledge transfer across different teams and different functions such as finance, product development or portfolio management. To convey knowledge across different domains or boundaries, agile methods rely heavily on frequent feedback loops based on direct face-to-face communication, but they also require the right artefacts in context to support a sustainable and effective knowledge transfer [ 15 ]. Similar to project handovers [ 16 ] or documentation practices [ 15 ], reporting relies on man-made artefacts such as marketing reports, financial status, portfolio updates, or retrospective reports. Such artefacts crossing different boundaries of knowledge, such as portfolio management, product management or software development, are considered ‘boundary objects’ [ 17 ].

Knowledge boundaries are both “a source of and a barrier to innovation” [ 18 ]. Innovation often happens on the boundaries of knowledge as stated by Leonard [ 19 ]. In order to create new products and service, agile teams need to effectively cross knowledge boundaries. Agile methods such as Scrum are based on cross-functional teams, which effectively cross knowledge boundaries through direct, face-to-face communication. However, when embedding agile teams in a wider organisational context, such as a portfolio management process, such teams effectively create new knowledge boundaries which need to be bridged effectively.

Carlile [ 18 ] describes knowledge boundaries in new product development, such as in Agile Software Development, and three distinct approaches move knowledge across boundaries: (1) the syntactic; (2) the semantic; and (3) the pragmatic approaches.

The syntactic approach deals with establishing a shared and stable syntax to enable accurate communication between sender and receiver [ 18 ]. Once a syntax is established, crossing the boundary becomes a knowledge transfer problem. Examples for boundary objects crossing the syntactic boundary are repositories storing the information using a previously agreed syntax. In the context of portfolio management, such repositories might be tools documenting a team’s development progress, or the status of schedules and budgets collected over time.

The semantic approach acknowledges that despite a shared language or syntax, different interpretations can occur. Different worlds of thought and areas of interest exist across different functions and teams within an organisation. For example, a software development team is interested in a high-quality and bug-free software, while product and portfolio managers are interested in a product that is commercially viable. Examples of boundary objects to cross a semantic boundary are standardised forms and methods. Using a User Story template, for example, allows to translate and store user requirements in a template understandable to business. Especially, when compared to traditional requirements documentation which often use a very technical language.

At the pragmatic knowledge boundary the parties involved need to be willing to understand, negotiate and alternate their knowledge [ 17 ]. Product and portfolio management, for example, needs to be willing to alternate their plans based on new technical possibilities given by the development team. Teams need to be willing to (re)align their work to new strategic priorities for new and existing product lines, or communicate and negotiate work based on discovered interdependencies with other teams. Example of a pragmatic boundary object is a Program Board used in SAFe [ 12 ].

The interaction of reporting practices, the involved artefacts crossing boundaries of knowledge, and the concrete metrics applied, can thus be considered important when studying reporting in agile portfolio management.

2.4 Gap in the Literature and Research Question

Following the state of art reviewed in the previous subsection, we would now like to reflect on the gap in the literature and the resulting objectives for this study.

To summarise, the existing literature points out that: Firstly, project portfolio management is associated with overall success on R&D organisations [ 8 ], and reporting is positively associated with portfolio success [ 3 ]. Secondly, findings from organisations employing agile practices imply that higher frequency of interaction, thus also reporting, is required in agile portfolio management [ 1 ]. And thirdly, the interplay of routines and artefacts is important for a good and sustainable agile practice [ 15 ].

In light of the existing literature we would like to pose the following research question to guide our study: What are reporting routines, metrics and artefacts applied in Agile Portfolio Management?

Considering the limitations of the available literature, it was felt that an explorative study would best be suited to this new topic. As is common in the study of management practices in real-world contexts, we chose the design of our case-study research the model proposed by Yin [ 20 ]. The data collection for the case studies was carried out by conducting semi-structured interviews with professionals working in large organisations that have agile portfolio management or are in the process of moving towards an agile portfolio management process. We chose a multiple case-study protocol with the aim of drawing more robust and generic findings which would have an impact on building a theory [ 20 ]. In the following subsection we will elaborate our case study protocol.

Case Selection. Interviews for this study were conducted with professionals working in organisations that complied with our case selection criteria and which were part of the portfolio management process. In order to find suitable organisations matching our criteria we used our own network, referrals and online reports. After identifying suitable organisations, we used own network, referrals as well as LinkedIn Premium to identify the candidates. The following case selection criteria were applied: (1) The organisation has at least 250 full-time employees (FTE). (2) The organisation uses agile methods with stable Scrum or Kanban teams (3) The organisation has a portfolio/programme management process with at least one portfolio. (4) The organisation has a portfolio reporting process. (5) The organisation has at least three teams working with agile methods. (6) The interviewee is directly involved in the portfolio management process of the organisation.

Data Collection: Semi-structured Active Interviews. The interviews took place between July 2016 and December 2016, each taking between 40 and 80 min. Most interviews were conducted face-to-face at the organisation. The interview guide consisted of the following main sections: (1) General Information regarding interviewee and organisation; (2) Project Management, Portfolio Management, Agile Portfolio Management; (3) Project Portfolio Management Office; and (4) Reporting. Example questions were: What are some of the common methods that you use within your organisation on portfolio level? What does your reporting process look like at initiative/project level? How does your reporting process look like at portfolio level? Could you write down a step-by-step guide to your reporting process? On a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with your portfolio reporting process? Which reporting activities and artefacts do you consider to be agile? Do you have a PMO? What are the functions of your PMO?

Data Analysis. All interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed with the consent of the interviewees. The analysis started by creating a case description of each organisation and an overview of all case characteristics. After creating case summaries we tabulated the data on artefacts and metrics to allow for cross-case comparison. The data from the process-related questions on project and initiative level was organised into narrative fragments and translated into process diagrams. The analysis of the data took place in close discussions with the two authors in the period between February and October 2017.

For this study, a total of 14 people were interviewed from different organisations across multiple sectors, sizes and countries. This chapter provides an overview of all gathered data and any additional observations that were made.

Overview Cases. An overview of case organisations is presented in Table 1 . The majority of our cases were large organisations with thousands of employees and a large IT portfolio, predominantly in the private sector. A large majority use a monthly reporting practice, based on Gates-driven reporting.

All case organisations reported applying Scrum as their main delivery method, partially supported by Kanban and Lean practices. Case organisations use different agile at large models connecting Scrum in the organisational setting. Two out of the 10 case organisations, case B, and E, mentioned that they used SAFe as the starting point for defining their agile portfolio management process. There were several participants who also mentioned SAFe as a framework that they would use in the future. Half of the case organisations in this study mentioned that they to some extent use PRINCE2. Case organisation B is somewhat of an exception when it comes to applying PRINCE2. The reason for this is that two people were interviewed from two different parts of the organisation.

We applied the agile transformation maturity model, with the stages Beginner, Novice, Fluent, Advanced and World-class , as proposed by Laanti [ 21 ] to determine portfolio maturity.

Reporting Practices. After creating process diagrams for each case organisations (see Fig. 1 ) we identified three distinct reporting approaches linked to the size and agile maturity of an organisation. Across our cases we found (1) Cadence-driven, (2) Tool-driven, and (3) PMO-driven reporting approaches.

Organisations with a Cadence-driven reporting approach employ reporting activities that revolve around their development cadence and method, such as the bi-weekly Sprints in Scrum, or the Program Increments (PI) in SAFe [ 12 ]. In our cases, we found this mostly be Scrum, which in practice means a two-weekly reporting cadence based on a two-weekly Scrum sprint, and the 4 + 1 two-sprint cadence in SAFe.

Organisations with a PMO-driven reporting approach employ reporting activities that revolve around templates provided by project management frameworks like PRINCE2. In most case organisations this meant the manual creation of reports in the form of documents or spreadsheets. Cloud-based office suites like Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive, or network drives are often used to store and share such reporting artefacts.

Organisations with a Tool-driven reporting approach employ reporting activities that are mostly high-level or on an ad hoc basis. In our case organisations, we found that day-to-day reporting activities are mostly automated with Tools like JIRA or CA Agile Central.

Reporting practice in case organisation B

Artefacts. In the cross-case results we identified three types of reporting artefacts in practice Footnote 1 as follows:

Tool-based artefacts. Are reporting artefacts that live within a tool. Examples identified among the case organisations include collaboration software, automated test reports or dashboards. Examples are the tool based Portfolio board reports in org. E.

Document-based artefacts. Reporting artefacts in the form of documents. Examples identified among the case organisations include excel spreadsheets, text-files, PowerPoint sheets. An example is the project sheet maintained by org. H.

Interaction-based artefacts. Report artefacts that are not created but are rather an intangible by-product of the reporting interaction. Examples identified among the case organisations include insights shared during a meeting or an informal ad hoc update using chat.

When we consider the reporting artefacts, the reporting process diagrams and the agile maturity we can see that organisation with a higher agile maturity tend to limit the amount of document-based reporting. When we compare the used artefacts with the fragments of narrative provided by the employees in our case study regarding their benefits and challenges, we can see that reporting artefacts work best when they are well thought out, are used and add value.

Metrics. From our cross-case analysis based on the metrics in Table 2 we identified 5 metric types:

Performance metrics measure the efficiency of the work (e.g. velocity and cycle time trends in org. B)

Quality metrics, measure the quality of the work (e.g. exceptions in org. B & D)

Progress metrics measure how far along you are with the work (e.g. velocity planned and realised in org. A)

Status metrics measure the current state of work (e.g. budget, resources)

Contextual metrics provide measurements and information on the work (e.g. project highlights in orgs. C, D and F, context descriptions)

Domains of reporting responsibility in Agile Portfolio Management

5 Analysis and Discussion

Based on our data from the case organisations we will now discuss our findings in light of the existing literature.

5.1 Three Domains of Knowledge Responsibility: Product, Development and Process

Across our case organisations we identified three main domains of knowledge practice involved: (1) Product and portfolio responsibility, (2) Development, and (3) Process. We have depicted the three domains and their reporting relations in Fig. 2 . As a product manager in Org. A. elaborated: “..So it is mainly the demos, the happiness of the team members and the happiness of the stakeholders..” .

This reporting configuration fundamentally differs from other project management frameworks like PRINCE2, as the role of the traditional project manager is split up into a content, process and team responsibility in the roles of the Product Owner and Scrum Master. In the majority of our case organisations, the team directly and frequently ‘reports’ to the business, demoing working software and other intermediate results at the end of each development cycle, rather than relying on ad hoc presentations, escalation meetings and intermediaries (e.g. PMO). For example as hinted by the Vice President of a product unit at Org. B.: “..we had them [PMOs] but we got rid of them. We wanted the people in the teams to feel linked and part of the project. So we did not want the people to feel like they were a generic team, they had to feel product ownership. So we distributed the PMOs in the product teams. So every product team has a release management team, we work according to SAFe.”

Product and portfolio managers are concerned about how well the complete product performs from a business perspective, when they can expect a product to be released, and what technical options for future development there are. Product and Portfolio management needs to provide strategic vision, guidance, product priorities and resources to the team.

Development teams and software architects are concerned about the quality of the software they produce, dependencies with other teams, and the directions for a product line. Development teams are providing product demos and technical options.

Scrum masters and Release Train Engineers are concerned about the quality of the process, teamwork and the happiness of the teams involved in order to produce a good product or service. Those responsible for the process, such as Scrum Masters and release teams, guide the teams to allow for effective work and remove impediments.

5.2 Three Types of Reporting Routines: Cadence-, Tool-, and PMO-Driven

Within our case organisations, we found three reporting approaches: a PMO-driven reporting approach, a Cadence-driven reporting approach and a Tool-driven reporting approach.

Based on the cross-case results, we found that the identified reporting approaches correlated with the agile maturity of the organisations and its size. Organisations with a lower agile portfolio management maturity and a gates-dominated portfolio management approach tend to apply a PMO-driven reporting approach. Organisations using a gates-dominated portfolio management with a higher agile maturity tended to use a Cadence-driven reporting approach.

Comparing the portfolio management approach used by the organisation with the reporting approach shows us that there is a connection between the two. We found that organisations using a portfolio review-dominated portfolio management approach will tend to use a Tool-driven reporting approach. organisations using a gates-dominated portfolio management approach will tend to use a Cadence-driven or a PMO-driven reporting approach. We therefore propose that both the portfolio management approach and the reporting approach is taken into account when making recommendations for achieving effective reporting (Table 3 ).

5.3 Using Characteristics of Boundary Objects to Understand Requirements for Effective Reporting in Agile Portfolio Management

In the following subsections we will apply the notion of boundary objects to understand the requirements for effective reporting encountered in our case organisations. We will first elaborate on quantitative metrics and qualitative information used for reporting across our cases. Then, we will discuss manual and automated reporting routines. Lastly, we will elaborate why specific artefacts and metrics, as boundary objects, are better suited for specific parts of the reporting process.

Qualitative vs Quantitative Reporting. One of the biggest differentiators for effective reporting we have found in our case organisations was a clear presence of both qualitative reporting as well as quantitative reporting. We found that qualitative reporting allows organisations to explore opportunities, share knowledge, provide context and provide strategic insights. We found that quantitative reporting allows organisations to quantify initiatives and their progress, verify goals, validate the value and provide quick tactical insights. In Table 4 we provide an overview of qualitative and quantitative reporting.

Qualitative and quantitative reporting in the case organisations with a relative high agile portfolio management maturity (see B, E and J) had defined and measurable goals. Within these case organisations, virtually all initiatives are expected to be quantifiable. Qualitative reporting in these organisations, on the other hand, is more loosely defined and is more often used at a higher level, or done on an ad hoc basis. Qualitative and quantitative reporting in case organisations with a medium to low agile portfolio management maturity (A and I) had fewer measurable goals. We found that case organisations with the Tool-driven reporting approach tend to have reporting processes in place that made a clear distinction between qualitative reporting and quantitative reporting. In organisations with a PMO- or Cadence-driven reporting approach, this distinction was less evident.

Manual vs Automated Reporting. Regardless of the scale of the organisation, manual reporting plays an important role in reporting due to the qualitative, contextual knowledge and information. While qualitative reporting information might be automated with approaches like machine learning in the future, our case organisations all employed a manual reporting process for qualitative information. From analysing the interviews, process diagrams and the literature, we found that the positive impact of automatic reporting on the effectiveness increases by contributing to more consistent and valid reporting, and more up-to-date reporting. Participant B1 stated the following when asked about what worked well in the reporting process of his organisation: “Anything that is automatically produced. What doesn’t work well is when the team needs to spend hours at night making reports using Excel and PowerPoint and all that nonsense. It’s very sensitive to creative manipulation and is always out of date.”

Effective Boundary Objects for Qualitative and Quantitative Reporting in Agile Portfolio Management. We will now elaborate on the boundary objects identified across the three domains of Product, Development and team responsibility, and how they relate to the identified reporting approaches as depicted in Table 4 .

We will use Carlile’s [ 18 ] three types of knowledge boundaries to understand the boundary objects. Following Carlile, at a syntactic boundary, an effective boundary object “establishes a shared syntax or language for individuals to represent their knowledge” . At a semantic boundary, an effective boundary object “provides a concrete means for individuals to specify and learn about their differences and dependencies across a given boundary” . At a pragmatic boundary, an effective boundary object “facilitates a process where individuals can jointly transform their knowledge” [ 18 ].

Quantitative reporting is mainly associated with the syntactic boundary across our cases. Most metrics are traditional metrics such as time, budget and scope, but also more recent metrics like Velocity. In our case organisations, especially the more mature ones like B, E and J, such quantitative metrics are automated in software tools. According to Carlile [ 18 ], the syntactic boundaries resemble a knowledge transfer problem which requires a shared and sufficient syntax across the boundaries, e.g. team members and Product Owners agree on Velocity and how it is measured as a quantifiable measure of the rate at which Scrum teams consistently deliver software. Once a shared syntax has been established, repositories such as the project management tools applied by our participants (e.g. CA Agile Central/Rally or JIRA) are an effective boundary object.

Qualitative reporting is predominantly associated with semantic and pragmatic boundaries [ 18 ]. It depends if qualitative information is used by participants to translate their knowledge across boundaries, or if the boundary objects need to support a process of negotiation and transformation of knowledge - thus, if a semantic or a pragmatic boundary needs to be crossed. User Stories, for example, are effective boundary objects for analysis and communication of requirements as the template allows for the translation and understanding of requirements across different functions (e.g. system users, developers, UI designers). User Stories alone are not an effective boundary object for reporting the progress of a project. A working software artefact is an effective boundary object to support the software development process as it allows the team to communicate progress, to collect feedback of users, and negotiate next priorities e.g. with Product Owners.

According to Carlile [ 17 ], crossing a pragmatic knowledge boundary is only possible when embedded in a feedback loop, a dialogue allowing for negotiation. Crossing the pragmatic boundary requires boundary objects such a demos embedded in sprint reviews, or other forms of synchronous face-to-face communication. Cadence-driven reporting such as the one present in organisations A, E or G allows for such.

Limitations. While we employed a rigorous method and payed attention in selecting our case organisations, there are limitations to our study. The main limitation lies in the limited amount of cases. The second limitation lies in the beginning maturity of our cases.

6 Conclusions

In this paper we present the preliminary findings of our study on reporting in agile portfolio management. Based on 14 interviews in 10 organisations applying agile methods in their portfolios of IT initiatives, we present a perspective on the practice in use for the first time.

There are four main contributions discussed in this article: (1) we identify three domains of knowledge and responsibility in agile portfolio management, (2) we identify three types of reporting routines, (3) we use the concept of ‘boundary objects’ to understand requirements for effective reporting across the identified domains, and lastly (4) we provide examples of effective boundary objects identified across our cases.

Across our case organisations we observed three distinct types of reporting routines: Cadence-, Tool- and PMO-driven reporting. With those approaches we observe two trends: The use of software tooling to automate reporting of quantitative metrics across agile teams, and socialisation of knowledge through frequent face-to-face review meetings in teams and at the portfolio level. As an organisation grows the automation of reporting plays an increasingly important role in achieving effectiveness. We found that large-scale organisations that have automation within their reporting process were able to transfer quantitative reporting information with more consistency, validity and efficiency. Regardless of the size of the organisation, qualitative reporting and reviews remain a key part of understanding the full portfolio context. To maintain effectiveness the primary focus of qualitative reports was to translate, to transform knowledge, and to make automated reporting actionable. Our findings suggest that organisations that strongly embed both qualitative and quantitative reporting felt that their reporting helped increase their performance, and were more satisfied with their reporting process.

We may conclude that reporting in agile portfolio management is characterized by a balance of qualitative reviews and quantitative metrics to enable a transparent connection of strategy to operations in context. Agile methods have an impact on the portfolio management process as they focus on the value under development and by doing it with a much higher frequency. The notion of knowledge boundaries and boundary objects can help to understand communication requirements and shape effective reporting routines to allow for such a higher degree of interaction.

While there are more artefacts involved in the software delivery cycle, (compare [ 16 ]), for the sake of focus in this study we only relate to artefacts related to the reporting process.

Stettina, C.J., Hörz, J.: Agile portfolio management: an empirical perspective on the practice in use. Int. J. Proj. Manag. 33 (1), 140–152 (2015)

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We thank all interview participants for generously contributing to this study.

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Christoph Johann Stettina

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Christoph Johann Stettina & Lennard Schoemaker

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Stettina, C.J., Schoemaker, L. (2018). Reporting in Agile Portfolio Management: Routines, Metrics and Artefacts to Maintain an Effective Oversight. In: Garbajosa, J., Wang, X., Aguiar, A. (eds) Agile Processes in Software Engineering and Extreme Programming. XP 2018. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 314. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91602-6_14

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I want to learn more about BlackRock.

Seek higher yields with iBonds ETFs or Bond SMAs

Karen Veraa, CFA

Key Takeaways:

Locking in rates now may be beneficial before the Fed starts to cut interest rates.
Holding bonds until maturity can help to potentially deliver yield, but buying individual bonds can be complex and time-consuming.
BlackRock gives you choices to build ladders at scale – go with individual bonds in an SMA or build it yourself with iBonds ETFs – either way, your clients may enjoy steadier income until maturity.

Overweight to cash and short-term bonds

Fixed income portfolios can use a spring cleaning. With interest rates high and the yield curve inverted, a record amount of money has flowed into money market funds and bank deposits. While investing in cash is an active decision, this positioning may contribute to investors not meeting their long-term goals. Using data from BlackRock’s Advisor Center, the average advisor’s moderate portfolio is about 23% invested in cash and short-term instruments, compared to just 2% in BlackRock’s Target Allocation models. 1

History shows bonds tend to outperform cash during the pause period and can benefit from price appreciation when interest rates fall, making now a great time to consider setting up portfolios for the next wave of the cycle. Advisors can use this interest rate pause as an opportunity to add longer maturity exposures back to client portfolios.

Figure 1: A Fed pause has historically been a good entry point for bonds

Source: Source: Bloomberg, as of 12/31/23. Total return historical analysis calculates average performance of the Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index (bonds) and the Bloomberg U.S. Treasury Bills: 1-3 Months TR Index (cash) in the 6 months leading up to the last Fed rate hike, between the last rate hike and first cut, and the 6 months after the first cut. The dates used for the last rate hike of a cycle are: 2/1/95, 3/25/97, 5/16/00, 6/29/06, 12/19/18. Dates used for the first-rate cut are: 7/6/95, 9/29/98, 1/3/01, 9/18/07, 8/1/19. Index performance is for illustrative purposes only. Index performance does not reflect any management fees, transaction costs or expenses. Indexes are unmanaged and one cannot invest directly in an index. Past performance does not guarantee future results.

Hold bonds to maturity with ladders

One way to potentially add income and stability to portfolios is to buy bonds and hold them to maturity, which can be achieved through building bond ladders. Laddering involves buying bonds that mature in each calendar year over your time horizon. For example, a 5-year ladder would allocate 20% to bonds with maturities in five consecutive calendar years. As bonds mature, the ladder can be maintained by using cash proceeds to purchase more bonds in furthest rung of the ladder.

Figure 2: 5-year corporate ladder

For illustrative purposes only

However, accessing individual bonds as well as researching and monitoring thousands of CUSIPS can be challenging and time-consuming. Advisors can partner with BlackRock to build ladders at scale.

Built for you vs. built by you: SMAs and iBonds ETFs

For clients with larger accounts and more complex needs, separately managed accounts (SMAs) can be a potential solution. Bond SMAs allow an investor to have a professionally managed portfolio of individual bonds that can be personalized to their goals and needs. Customization options include time horizon, cash flow timing, tax status and credit ratings, to name a few. Dedicated portfolio managers help position client portfolios for developments in the bond market, and our credit research team analyzes every bond owned in the portfolio. 2

For investors with smaller accounts or requiring less customization, iBonds ETFs can offer a scalable, low-cost bond solution. iBonds are designed to mature like a bond, diversify like a fund and trade like a stock. iBonds are now available in five bond market sectors; national municipals, U.S. Treasuries, TIPS, investment grade and high yield corporates. Advisors can use iBonds ETFs to create custom ladders out to ten years, express views on the curve or add duration to portfolios. iBonds pay monthly income and can be sold on exchange. Test drive our iBonds using our Bond Laddering Tool.

Figure 3: Compare SMAs and iBonds ETFs

*Fund expense ratio does not equal fees assessed on an SMA

Case study: Tax and cash flow customization: A high-net-worth client lives in California and has most of their assets in a taxable account. The client is tax sensitive and has a fifteen-year investment time horizon with some liquidity needs in year four. A municipal SMA ladder invested fully in California bonds can help maximize tax-exempt income while helping meet cash flow needs over a specific time horizon.

Case study: Required minimum distributions (RMDs): Clients must take a withdrawal from their retirement account when the account holder turns 72. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) requires a minimum amount to be withdrawn each year thereafter, known as the RMD. From ages 72 to 82, assuming no portfolio growth, clients will need to withdraw almost 50% of the account value.

For example, a single retiree turning 72-years old in 2023 has $100,000 invested in an IRA. This client must withdraw RMDs according to the IRS Uniform Lifetime Tables, by dividing the account size by the distribution period for each year. iBonds ETFs can potentially be used to ladder out the first 10 years of RMDs and any remaining assets in the account can be invested in other assets. Since iBonds ETFs mature in mid-October or December, clients will have cash in their accounts to help meet these IRS-mandated withdrawals before year-end.

How do I get started?

iBonds ETFs and SMAs can help get fixed income portfolios back on track after two years of rising rates. Advisors can thoughtfully seek to add income and stability to portfolios before the next rate cycle begins.

7 ways to use iBonds ETFs to help your clients and your practice

Blackrock for fixed income smas, ibonds ladder tool, access exclusive tools and insights.

Explore My Hub, your new personalized dashboard, for portfolio tools, market insights, and practice resources.

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Get more insights

BlackRock’s purpose is to help more and more people experience financial well-being. As a fiduciary to investors and a leading provider of financial technology, we help millions of people build savings that serve them throughout their lives by making investing easier and more affordable. For additional information on BlackRock, please visit our Corporate Website | Twitter | LinkedIn

1 Source: Morningstar, BlackRock, Aladdin. “Advisor models” data is as of 12/31/23. “BLK model” data as of 3/14/24.

2 A personal portfolio manager and customization requests generally require a minimum investment of $1 million

Carefully consider the Funds' investment objectives, risk factors, and charges and expenses before investing. This and other information can be found in the Funds' prospectuses or, if available, the summary prospectuses, which may be obtained by visiting the iShares Fund and BlackRock Fund prospectus pages. Read the prospectus carefully before investing.

This material is intended for use by a third-party financial professional in consultation with their client. BlackRock Investment Management, LLC (“BlackRock”) acts as either a discretionary investment manager or a non-discretionary model provider to sponsor firms in a variety of separately managed account or wrap fee programs. BlackRock is not acting in a fiduciary capacity with regard to any client of a financial professional. Results of any account or portfolio derived from this information may vary materially from the results shown herein. There is no guarantee that any investment strategy illustrated will be successful or achieve any particular level of results. Any tax information provided herein is for illustrative purposes only and does not constitute the provision of tax advice by BlackRock. Please consult with a tax professional for more information with regard to an investor’s specific situation.

Case study shown for illustrative purposes only. This is not meant as a guarantee of any future result or experience. This information should not be relied upon as research, investment advice or a recommendation regarding the Funds or any security in particular.

An investment in fixed income funds is not equivalent to and involves risks not associated with an investment in cash.

Fixed income risks include interest-rate and credit risk. Typically, when interest rates rise, there is a corresponding decline in the value of debt securities. Credit risk refers to the possibility that the debt issuer will not be able to make principal and interest payments. There may be less information on the financial condition of municipal issuers than for public corporations. The market for municipal bonds may be less liquid than for taxable bonds. Some investors may be subject to federal or state income taxes or the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Capital gains distributions, if any, are taxable.

Shares of ETFs trade at market price, which may be greater or less than net asset value. The iShares® iBonds® ETFs (“Funds”) will terminate within the month and year in each Fund’s name. An investment in the Fund(s) is not guaranteed, and an investor may experience losses and/or tax consequences, including near or at the termination date. In the final months of each Fund's operation, its portfolio will transition to cash and cash-like instruments. As a result, its yield will tend to move toward prevailing money market rates, and may be lower than the yields of the bonds previously held by the Fund and lower than prevailing yields in the bond market.

Diversification and asset allocation may not protect against market risk or loss of principal. Buying and selling shares of ETFs may result in brokerage commissions.

The strategies discussed are strictly for illustrative and educational purposes and are not a recommendation, offer or solicitation to buy or sell any securities or to adopt any investment strategy. There is no guarantee that any strategies discussed will be effective. The information provided is not intended to be tax advice. Investors should be urged to consult their tax professionals or financial advisors for more information regarding their specific tax situations.

No proprietary technology or asset allocation model is a guarantee against loss of principal. There can be no assurance that an investment strategy based on the tools will be successful.

This material contains general information only and does not take into account an individual's financial circumstances. This information should not be relied upon as a primary basis for an investment decision. Rather, an assessment should be made as to whether the information is appropriate in individual circumstances and consideration should be given to talking to a financial professional before making an investment decision.

This material represents an assessment of the market environment as of the date indicated; is subject to change; and is not intended to be a forecast of future events or a guarantee of future results. This information should not be relied upon by the reader as research or investment advice regarding the funds or any issuer or security in particular.

Prepared by BlackRock Investments, LLC, member FINRA.

©2024 BlackRock, Inc or its affiliates. All Rights Reserved. BLACKROCK , iSHARES and iBONDS are trademarks of BlackRock, Inc. or its affiliates. All other trademarks are those of their respective owners.

iCRMH0524U/S-3542780

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