A portfolio planner can create scenarios to plan an optimal portfolio of projects for the company, based on available budget targets and strategic goals.
Portfolio management entails collaboration and negotiation between you, as the budget forecaster, and the project managers in your company. At their respective project levels, project managers maintain project information and create cash flow budgets and projections in the Cost Manager.
During a scenario analysis, you can:
- Apply regional budget targets
- Group the projects in the scenario according to project characteristics
- Sort and filter the rows of project data and analyze the summary totals
- Accept the project managers’ budget numbers or propose new numbers
- Accept the schedule dates, or remove or postpone planned projects
- Create additional scenarios to reflect other possible forecasts
Note: The numbers you propose in a scenario will not affect a project’s live data. Your proposed numbers are stored only in the Portfolio Manager and will not affect live project data until a scenario has been approved by your company management.
During the scenario analysis, the portfolio planner collaborates with the project managers to negotiate the numbers and dates until they reach an agreement.
The project managers do not see the changes the portfolio planner makes on the portfolio scenario sheet because a portfolio manager deals with multiple projects but each project manager deals with only one project and may not have permission to access the information about another project.
To communicated the portfolio scenarios to the project managers:
The portfolio planner must share the portfolio scenarios (see Scenario Tab) with the project managers and the project manager must:
- Have access to the project Cash Flow module
- Set up Cash Flow Curves accordingly (Shared, Original, Approved)
The Cash Flow Curve shows the portfolio planner's proposed budget numbers for the project. The project manager can include the Cash Flow Curve on the Cost Worksheet (along with the forecast budget or any other budget curve) in order to see the difference between the project numbers and the portfolio planner's proposed budget numbers.
After the portfolio manager completes the budget forecast analysis, using scenarios, and the project manager approves the results, the portfolio manager can mark the scenario as Approved.