The portfolio your board can actually trust
Projects deliver their numbers themselves, scenarios make decisions calculable, approvals leave evidence: portfolio steering from project reality to the board report - on one data foundation.
From project to board report
One-pager, health score and reports emerge in the project - the portfolio reads along.
Why portfolio steering fails today
Rarely because of strategy - mostly on the numbers' way into the steering committee.
The briefing is older than the situation
By the time the committee slides are ready, every third project has moved. Decisions are made on the state of the week before last.
Priority goes to the loudest voice
Whoever sounds most urgent gets the budget. A comparable yardstick across all initiatives is missing.
Decisions without a capacity check
The portfolio is approved as if capacity were unlimited. That the same teams are booked several times over only shows up as delay.
Decisions without evidence
Who approved what, when - and on which numbers? When audit asks, the search begins.
Portfolio steering step by step - from project reality to the board report
This is how the budget round runs in the “Customer Solutions” portfolio: five stations where numbers emerge, variants are calculated and decisions leave a trail.
The numbers emerge where the work happens
Every project maintains its one-pager, dates and budget anyway - from that come the health score, the container traffic light and the scheduled status report with a fixed structure: progress, schedule, cost and performance assessment, next steps. Overdue reports are chased by the system itself. For the portfolio this means: nobody collects anything - the basis is already there.
Projects in the portfolio
Portfolio tile “Customer Solutions”
Budget: 62 % consumed
Progress: 48 % (budget-weighted)
computed live - not maintained
The organisation as a portfolio tree - with numbers that compute themselves
Sub-portfolios, programmes and projects map your structure to any depth, with the master portfolio automatically on top. Budget consumption and budget-weighted progress are computed live from the projects on every level - and stay consistent even when you restructure. Programmes prove their value: five synergy types, from identified to realised.
Every total is a computed result from the projects - restructuring loses no data.
The budget round happens in a sandbox
Cuts, postponements, new initiatives: scenarios are complete copies of your portfolio - the real one stays untouched. Up to five variants sit side by side with deltas on budget, project count and portfolio score; you pin one as the reference. The decision follows a fixed approval path, and applying it to the live portfolio is atomic, with a conflict check.
Budget −€1.2m
16 projects (−2)
Ø score 66
Budget −€0.8m
17 projects (−1)
Ø score 74
Only what capacity can carry gets approved
Before applying, the allocation matrix shows whether the decision adds up: demand against available load per department, skill or organisational unit, month by month - in percent, person-days, hours or FTE. Bottlenecks become visible months in advance, and the utilisation matrix takes you down to the individual person.
Cross-check: skill Engineering
Jan
Feb
Mar
Available load = capacity minus absences × availability factor - bottlenecks months in advance.
Every decision leaves evidence
Requests and scenarios run through defined approval paths with owners, deadlines and automatic escalation - nothing dies in an inbox. Approved status reports are frozen as of their reporting date and roll up through programmes to the portfolio top. The board report shows the same number that emerged in the project - no intermediate stop.
Owners, deadlines and escalation per step - with a complete protocol.
And new initiatives have an orderly way in: project requests pass through a stage-gate pipeline with recorded go, kill and hold decisions before they become part of the portfolio.
One budget round, eight modules - one data foundation
In WORKSPACE.PM, enterprise portfolio management is not a bolt-on but the platform working in concert: steering sits on top, the truth emerges below.
Project management
Resources
AI & automation
One data foundation - from project to board
What is maintained in the project computes its way up: health, budget, reports. No collection rounds, no interim versions, no second truth.
And who feeds the portfolio?
A portfolio cockpit only helps if nobody has to fill it by hand.
No collecting, no re-keying
Figures like budget consumption and progress are computed live from the projects instead of maintained in summary fields. What project managers update anyway is, at the same time, the portfolio truth.
Grows with your structure
Division, country entity or programme: the hierarchy goes as deep as you need, restructuring loses no data, and the REST API feeds your BI. Seven analysis chart types and configurable dashboards cover the committee formats.
Audit-proof decisions
Approvals run with named deciders, deadlines and a complete protocol; approved report snapshots are locked as of their date. When the follow-up question comes, the evidence is already there.
Related use cases
The portfolio stands - this is how you deepen the steering.
Frequently asked questions about the enterprise portfolio
What PMO leadership and management want to know before switching.
No. The portfolio has no input fields of its own for status or budget consumption: it reads what is maintained in the project anyway - one-pager, dates, costs, reports. Consolidation is a computation, not an extra task.
Through a request pipeline with stage gates: requests are scored by several reviewers per evaluation scheme, ROI, net present value and payback period derive from the cost-benefit plan, and the gate produces a recorded go, kill or hold decision. An approved request converts straight into a project.
Yes. Scenarios are copies of the portfolio; you change budgets, dates, priorities or the project mix and compare up to five variants including deltas against the reference. Applying happens only after approval - atomically, with a conflict check in case the live portfolio changed in the meantime.
Both the same data, each at their level: the board sees consolidated figures, analyses and approved reports, project leads see their project in detail. Permissions for portfolios, programmes and requests are controlled separately.
A portfolio-wide risk cockpit bundles all project and programme risks: a hotspot heatmap by portfolio and risk type, top risk drivers, and a risk-based Monte Carlo simulation with P50, P80 and P90 cost exposure.
Steer the portfolio from project reality
Start for free: map the structure, dock the projects, run the first scenarios - and in 30 days you'll know whether it fits.