How to Incorporate Strategic Portfolio Management into the PMO
About this webinar
In this webinar, Deborah Yates joins Stuart Easton to explore what changes when a PMO takes on a Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) role. Drawing on Deborah’s experience across different organisations, they look beyond project execution to the capabilities needed to connect organisational strategy with the work being funded and delivered.
A recurring theme is that adding more templates and processes is not the place to start. SPM requires clearer strategy, meaningful portfolio choices, leadership decision-making and a stronger focus on the outcomes the organisation is trying to achieve.
What you’ll hear
- Evolve beyond project execution. Traditional project-management capability still matters, but the PMO also needs to understand the wider mix of work, organisational capabilities and portfolio decisions that move strategy forward.
- Make strategy usable at every level. Break high-level strategy down so people can understand how their work contributes, and connect strategic goals to the work being funded and delivered.
- Make prioritisation change commitments. Labels such as “strategic” or “compliance” do not resolve competition between initiatives. Portfolio choices still need to determine what starts, continues, pauses or stops.
- Put real decisions into governance. Leadership and portfolio committees need useful information, but they also need to make decisions. When there is too much work to deliver, governance has to be able to stop or defer work rather than simply report the overload.
- Move from annual to continuous planning. Revisit the portfolio through the fiscal year as priorities or circumstances change, rather than treating the annual plan as fixed, and use what-if analysis to understand how new work affects existing commitments.
- Manage outcomes, not just delivery. Completing work on time and tracking project costs do not by themselves establish business value. Keep attention on the benefits and outcomes the work is intended to create.
- Report at portfolio level. Use roadmaps, financial insight, outcome measures and portfolio reporting to show how the organisation is progressing against strategy and what decisions leadership needs to make.
Deborah’s practical emphasis is to invest in culture, governance and communication before adding another layer of process. The PMO can provide the information and structure for better portfolio decisions, with leadership and portfolio governance bodies taking responsibility for the choices that follow.
Research in context
Deborah’s argument is not only about PMO process. The connection between strategy and the work an organisation actually funds is a wider management challenge.
In a 2024 McKinsey Global Survey of 617 executives and managers, only about half said their companies effectively aligned budgets with corporate strategy, while 53% said their organisations were in the habit of fully funding identified priorities.
That is the gap this webinar explores: strategy becomes operational only when priorities are connected to real funding and resource choices.
How this connects to TransparentChoice
A question Deborah raises: when new work arrives, how do you know what it will do to the portfolio already running? When funding and capacity are already committed, the decision is not only whether the new initiative is worthwhile, but what would have to change to make room.
TransparentChoice brings existing and proposed work into the same decision model, makes leadership priorities explicit, and uses them alongside funding, capacity and the other constraints you include. It compares feasible portfolio alternatives and shows what stays, what gives way and what changes when priorities, assumptions or constraints are updated.
Leadership still decides what to fund, continue, change, defer or stop.
Learn more
Join the next live webinar
Bridging the Strategy–Execution Gap
Dirk Withake argues that strategy is a choice about what not to pursue, and that a long list of priorities is not a priority order. Go deeper on how a PMO makes demand against committed capacity visible so leadership can decide what gives way. Watch the webinar.
People Eat Process for Breakfast
Explore how to keep governance useful without turning it into bureaucracy, using minimum viable process to support clear decisions, accountability and honest escalation. Read the article.
Harbor Foods PMO: Winning Executive Buy-in Through Prioritization
See how a developing PMO turned an accumulated backlog into business-led prioritisation, with business leaders rather than IT setting the criteria weights and scoring the work. See the customer story.
Speakers
Deborah Yates is an experienced leader in portfolio and transformation, bringing expertise in program management, governance, and organizational change. She focuses on helping organizations deliver greater value through effective prioritization and impactful PMOs.
Stuart Easton is Founder & CEO of TransparentChoice. He works with leaders and portfolio teams on decisions about which investments and initiatives to fund, continue, change, defer or stop when priorities compete for limited funding and capacity. His work combines structured decision-making with practical portfolio choices.