Welcome to the Collaborating on support items section. Here are the core actions for collaborating on portfolio and program support items in Portfolio IQ:

1. Manage issues
   
2. Manage risks
   
3. Track decisions
   
4. Record and manage change requests
   
5. Document constraints
   
6. Capture assumptions
   
7. Capture lessons learned
   
8. Manage documents
   

None of these are mandatory, and some are not available to portfolios. You may skip some, or even all, based on your delivery requirements.



Download Job Aid: Collaborating on portfolio and program support items

Important: If you are not familiar with Portfolio IQ, we recommend you review the Portfolio IQ Overview page. It will provide you with a working knowledge of the Portfolio IQ area.

Portfolios and Programs have an abbreviated, and much less formal, life cycle which involves planning, executing, and closing.  The focus at this stage is to help you and your team maintain all of the non-schedule-based support items for the high-level initiatives, recognizing that the supporting elements, i.e projects, will also maintain lower-level support items specific to each individual project.

Here are a few practical tips:

• Portfolio IQ allows you to combine projects into either portfolios or programs.  This allows you to define and control the details at the project level while also enabling big picture management for larger initiatives.

• First, let us understand the difference between a portfolio and a program.  Portfolio IQ is based on the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) definitions, so:
  
  
  
  ٠ A Portfolio involves identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other related work, to achieve specific strategic business objectives.
  
  
  ٠ A Program can either be stand-alone program of work or a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and control not available from managing them individually.
  
  
  ٠ Or to rephrase that as defined in Portfolio IQ, a Portfolio is a collection of programs and projects which help deliver a strategic business objective. 
  
  
  ٠ Therefore, a Portfolio is designed to be dynamic with no defined financial or schedule constraints; and a Program can be a collection of projects which deliver a specific result, and therefore does have defined financial and schedule constraints. 
  

• Consistent with Project Management Institute’s (PMI) definition, in Portfolio IQ we use Issues to track and manage all current challenges, or opportunities, that could impact the program’s successful conclusion.  You can identify, prioritize, assign, and track by due date all issues to help ensure they are resolved in a timely fashion.

• Also consistent with PMI’s definition, in Portfolio IQ we use Risks to track and manage all future challenges, or opportunities, that could impact the portfolio or program’s successful conclusion.  Like Issues, you can identify, assign, and track by due date all risks to help ensure they are managed in a proactive manner.  Since risks have not yet occurred, you can also manage them based on likelihood, consequences, costs, and trigger dates to help prioritize which risks should be managed more closely and actively.

• Decisions can be used to identify and manage key decisions required to move the portfolio or program forward, or to record decisions made that do not impact the scope, cost, or schedule (i.e. Do not require a change request). We believe that using Decisions allows for more flexibility while still ensuring that a record (with formal approval) exists for all important decisions. 

• Change requests on the other hand typically involve changes to the portfolio or program’s scope, budget, and / or schedule and therefore require more detailed management.  In addition to effort, cost, and schedule impacts from the change, you can also record the impacts the change has on other areas and formally track and manage the approval (or rejection) of the change requests on your portfolio or program. 

• Constraints can be used to record known conditions that the portfolio or program must conform to or that may impact the overall work on the initiative.  Constraints are often used to record external factors that could impact progress or that must be adhered to.

• Assumptions should be used to document any actions taken, often in planning a portfolio or program, that are believed to be true but cannot be confirmed, typically because the portfolio or program has no control over the conditions that are being documented.  If an assumption proves to be false, this is often an indicator that a change request is required to adjust the plan to match the current situation.

• Lessons learned allow you (and your team) to record valuable knowledge gained that may be helpful for future portfolios or programs.  Commitment to capturing lessons learned during project execution helps the organization drive continuous process improvement.

• And finally, Portfolio IQ includes document management to ensure that all relevant documents, as well as formal project deliverables are available to all team members in a centralized location.
  
  

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_{Disclaimer: Some images in the instructional video and text instructions contained herein may appear different from (or not available) in your organization’s Sensei IQ instance due to specific custom configurations and/or continuous solution updates. Ensure that you are already an enabled user in the Sensei.IQ for Project application and check out the What’s New page. Contact your system administrator for any assistance}.