Welcome to the Understanding portfolio/program status section. Here are the core actions for understanding portfolio and program status in Portfolio IQ:

1. Understand progress
   
2. Validate key dates
   
3. Set program KPIs and compose status narratives
   
4. Adjust the portfolio/program
   

Download Job Aid: Understanding Portfolio/Program Status

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 stakeholders reviewing the Insights and Status reports which rollup not just the schedule details but also the status of all the supporting items such as issues, risks, and changes to give you a true big picture of the status of the initiative.

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. 
  
  

• Portfolio IQ has both Insights and Status reports which rollup the details from all associated programs and projects to give you a big picture of the current progress towards achieving the goals of the portfolio or program.
  
  
• Knowing the current progress on the portfolio or program, you should review the high level Key Dates to ensure that they are still realistic.  Variations should be identified and resolved by meeting with the stakeholders to obtain permission to adjust them to align to the current status or by meeting with the appropriate project managers to initiate corrective actions on the projects.
  
  
• Programs, which have defined targets, have an optional status update which allows you to set red, yellow, or green key performance indicators (KPIs) and compose status narratives to communicate the current status to the program stakeholders.
  
  
• And finally, as required, you have the ability to add or remove related programs and projects to fine tune the initiative based on the current status.
  

_{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}.