The Most Valuable Portfolio Management Skill They Never Taught You

About this webinar

What if starting projects sooner is one of the reasons they finish later? Michael Hannan argues that portfolio performance depends not only on which projects are selected, but on how work is allowed to flow through scarce resources. When everything starts at once, high utilization can coexist with long waits, constant switching and slow completion.

In conversation with Stuart Easton, Mike uses bottleneck and traffic analogies, a deliberately simplified three-project portfolio and the Manhattan boat evacuation on 9/11 to explore how work moves through constrained systems. He connects three practical levers: measure closer to value, control how work enters the system by staggering starts around constrained resources, and use prioritization to decide which work should go first.

What you’ll hear

• Look for the system behind the firefighting. Mike maps a vicious cycle in which long projects, shortcuts, defects, weak planning, shifting resources and additional reporting reinforce one another. His argument is that treating those symptoms individually misses the leverage points upstream.
• Measure closer to value, not just activity. Mike challenges KPIs centered on utilization and project cost. When direct value is difficult to measure, he suggests looking at measures such as the rate of project or minimum viable product completions as a closer proxy for the value side of the portfolio.
• Do not confuse high utilization with good flow. Keeping every resource busy can feel efficient while work waits inside the system. Mike uses traffic and bottleneck examples to show why pushing more work into constrained capacity can slow the rate at which projects finish.
• Stagger starts instead of making every approved project active at once. In Mike’s simplified example, three projects pass through the same three specialized resources or teams. Staggering starts around the bottleneck creates a steadier completion cadence: the third project waits before entering the system yet still finishes earlier, and a fourth project fits without adding people or assuming faster individual tasks.
• Combine flow with prioritization. Sequencing controls how work moves through constrained capacity; prioritization helps determine which work should enter first. Stuart and Mike connect the two so higher-value work can receive earlier access without loading every approved project into the system at once.
• Hold capacity back so the bottleneck keeps moving. Mike’s closing example is the 9/11 Manhattan boatlift. Instead of sending every available boat straight to the piers, the Coast Guard gathered them at Governors Island and released them only when docking space opened up. Boats sat idle by design, and that is what kept the evacuation flowing. In Mike’s framing, each boatload was a staggered project, and spare capacity outside the bottleneck is not waste.
• Count value delivered, not cars on the road. Stuart reframes the traffic analogy: what matters is how many people reach their destination, not how many vehicles pass a point. Mike’s deliberately simplified ROI example shows why faster flow pays back more than proportionally, because finishing work sooner and finishing more of it compound each other.