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Leadership26 October 20266 min read

Program and portfolio leadership: running many technical initiatives at once

A programme is a group of related efforts managed together for a shared outcome. A portfolio is the set of programmes and projects an organisation chooses to fund. The skills change from managing work to managing choices.

In this post
  1. Program-level questions
  2. Portfolio-level questions
  3. Habits that help
  4. Sources and further reading

Program-level questions

  • How do these efforts depend on one another?
  • Where are the shared risks and the shared resources?
  • What must be true for the outcome to be delivered?

Portfolio-level questions

  • Which initiatives are worth their cost, and which should stop?
  • Is the mix balanced between running the business and changing it?
  • Do we have the people to do it all?

Habits that help

  • One clear view of status, dependencies and risk.
  • Regular reviews that can end work, not only continue it.
  • Visible trade-offs when capacity is short.
  • Leaders who ask for early bad news.

Sources and further reading

  1. IICTP. Program Technical Practitioner credential page. iictp.org/certifications/pgtp.
  2. IICTP. Portfolio Technical Practitioner credential page. iictp.org/certifications/pftp.

IICTP is a new independent credential and is not ISO/IEC 17024 accredited.

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