Process flows

Creating investment and capacity planning scenarios allows you to model different investment decisions and various approaches to balancing investment demand with capacity.

Creating a shared scenario allows you and others who have access to the relevant portfolio to work in a what-if environment until a particular scenario is ready to be published and shared as your organization's investment plan. When working in a shared environment, you and other users review the same proposed investment plan so that each of you can examine and update those portions that affect your respective areas.

A Planning portfolio can also include user-defined scenarios created to model and evaluate different investment decisions and approaches to balancing capacity with demand in a what-if environment. Data in those scenarios can be modified without affecting the corresponding data in the portfolio's relevant financial plan as changes are made.

For more information:

• Extended Use Case: Shared Scenarios

Set and maintain portfolio targets/budget and capacity

Analysis of investments is achieved by comparing what’s available—capacity (which can be in the form of resource capacity or a financial budget)—versus demand (derived by the forecast of work in the portfolio).

To carry out and understand portfolio investment planning, it's essential that an accurate recording of your target budget and resource capacity is captured. The detail of the summarized capacity totals can be drilled into via the Financial Planning Detail screens associated with each capacity entity.

Capacity budgets and targets can also be managed from within a Planning portfolio. The Capacity Portfolio Manager shows a summarized capacity total broken down by the capacity slicer in the portfolio definition.

For more information:

• Cost-Center Planning

• Updating Capacity and Demand Data by Accessing the Financial Plan

Investment and Capacity Planning provides a mechanism to compile all investments (accepted, in-flight, and potential investments) and carry out an assessment and approval in the context of the whole portfolio. The Rank view within Investment and Capacity Planning provides the ability to sort the list of investments based on subjective or qualitative scoring and prioritization criteria to prioritize investments within the portfolio. This ranking is then used in subsequent screens in Investment and Capacity Planning as sorting criteria.

Investments can be ranked automatically based on criteria and/or manually by the users of each scenario. Investments are displayed in ranked order within a scenario. If no ranking has been applied, investments are displayed alphabetically. If a scenario includes both ranked and unranked investments, unranked investments will display at the top in alphabetical order, and the ranked investments will display below in ascending order of their ranking.

For more information:

• Ranking Investments
• Automatically Rank Investments Based on Criteria
• Dragging Investments to Rank Them
• Defining Threshold Lines for the Rank View
• Removing an Investment's Ranking
• Alerts

The objective of this step is to confirm the approval of investments within the portfolio targets/constraints of costs and resource capacity.

​The Analyze view provides the ability to approve investments by moving them above the line (accepted) and seeing the impact on overall budgetary constraints and capacity. Any changes to the Investment Approval Status and Internal Priority in the Investment and Capacity screens are "what-if" changes and are not confirmed until the scenario is published to execution.

To analyze investments "above and below the line":

• Investments in this view are displayed in two trays:
  • The upper tray represents above-the-line investments with Accept or Conditionally Accept statuses.
  • Investments in the lower tray represent below-the-line investments with Refuse or Analyze statuses.
• If the investments exceeding targets are in the below-the-line investments, it means that while the total of the portfolio will exceed the targets, the current above-the-line investments will not exceed the target.
• Depending on the selected column set, you can also view different summarized financial information.
• To make investment decisions (to approve or refuse an investment), open the action menu next to each investment to select the desired status. Here you can also view other information about the investment. Alternatively, you can use a drag-and-drop operation to move the investments between the above the line and below the line trays.

For more information:

•  Updating Investment Approval Status and Priority
• Reviewing a Gantt Chart in Investment and Capacity Planning

The Shift view provides visibility of where demand exceeds capacity by period, as well as the ability to shift investments to fit within available capacity.

After portfolio investments have been ranked and analyzed, date ranges of approved and conditionally-approved investments are further evaluated. Constraint limitations on specific resource types may be resolved by shifting investment dates, and investments below the line may be approved.

For more information:

• Shift Investments
• Data Display and Layout of the Shift View
• Shifting Investments to Resolve Capacity Issues

The objective of this step is to identify resource capacity/demand issues or cost time-phasing issues and to smooth demand across time to plan to deliver the programs within the capacity and time-phased budget targets.

The Balance view allows you to look at investments that have been accepted in the scenario, and the time-profiled impact of those investments against the capacity and budget targets.

To balance investments:

• In the Balance Investments view, use the category menu to decide which information to view. In this example, we are viewing Labor Currency. You can also view Labor Effort by selecting Labor and Effort. Depending on your usage model, you can also view Expense, Capitalized Costs, and Benefits.
• The Focus Control option displays the controls available for you to organize the information when you perform drill-down for analysis. The controls allow you to decide how many attributes to be included in the summarization for drill down. You decide which order they should be presented by moving them to the left of the focus control bar. The control on the far left will be the first level of drill down, following by attributes to its right.
• Information on the grid at the lowest level is editable when you are viewing a user-created scenario or the Shared Scenario if it is editable.
• Action menus at the program level provide options to view additional information for the program.
• Action menus at the lowest level provide options to update attributes of the line or to model changes to the demand.
• Action menus from the Capacity levels provide the option to view the financial plan of the selected capacity to model changes to defined capacity.
• Use the Scenario options to change the scenario you are viewing or to create and manage scenarios.

Note: it's important to not accidentally model what-if decisions on the Shared Scenario. What-if modeling should be done on user-created scenarios and published to the shared scenario when you are ready to commit to the plan.

For more information:

• Updating Capacity and Demand Data in Investment and Capacity Planning
• Changing Account Line Attributes in Investment and Capacity Planning
• Updating Capacity and Demand Data by Accessing the Financial Plan

The purpose of this step is to capture a portfolio baseline in order to create a snapshot of the investment decisions and investments as of the end of the investment planning cycle. As the investment portfolio evolves and the program landscape continues to change, new programs arrive, or planned programs fluctuate in risk, forecasted cost or strategic alignment, a continuous reassessment of investment decisions and priorities will force amendments to the investment planning portfolio. This working version can then be compared against the baseline and variances analyzed.

After creating versions, it's important to assign the correct Working Version or Comparison Version tags to see their respective values in column sets. See Managing Investment and Capacity Planning Scenarios for more information.

The Planned Investments comparison view highlights financial differences between the working version and the comparison version.

The top tray compares financial data differences based on the selected column set. The bottom tray compares investment approval status and rank order.

The Approval Decisions view compares Investment Approval statuses for multiple scenarios.

Selection of scenarios is made in the Investment and Capacity Planning screen's preferences. If no scenarios are selected, this screen compares all scenarios. Investments are displayed in the same way as the bottom tray of the Planned Investments comparison view—by Above the Line, Trade-off, and Below the Line.

For more information:

• Planned Investments View
• Approval Decisions View
• Compare Investments

By comparing multiple scenarios, you and other users who have access to a relevant portfolio can work in a what-if environment until a particular scenario is ready to be published and shared as your organization's investment plan. Data in those scenarios can be modified without affecting the corresponding data in the portfolio's relevant financial plan as changes are made.

If there are multiple scenarios within a Planning portfolio, designate your Working scenario, then compare Planned Investments or compare Approval Decisions to display information to help you identify differences relevant to the financial data, investment approval status, ranking values of investments, and trade-off of approval decisions.

The purpose of this step is to publish the investment approval decisions that were made to the scenario during the ranking, analyzing, shifting, and balancing of investments versus organizational capacity. Based on the above-the-line (accepted) and below-the-line decisions made during this investment planning process, the Investment Approval Status values are updated accordingly—all accepted programs will be changed to an Investment Approval Status of Accepted. Investment Approval decisions made in a scenario are "what-if" and not visible and live until the publishing process is completed.

• If the investment approvals have been made in the Shared Scenario then the Publish from the Shared Scenario transaction will make the decisions live.
• If the investment approvals have been made in another (not shared) scenario then the Publish from Scenario can be used to move the investment decisions to just the shared scenario or to the demand as well.

Note: in addition to investment approval decisions, any amendments to demand data of investments or the capacity/budget targets within the (non-shared) scenario will also be published live and update the financial planning detail screens accordingly for the investments and/or capacity in question.

For more information:

• Publishing the Current Version of an Investment Plan as the Official Plan
• Publishing a Scenario in Investment and Capacity Planning
• About Lifecycles and the Publication of the Shared Scenario

The purpose of this step is to change the status of refused programs to Closed. If the program was in progress, any projects allocated to the program would need to be closed as well to prevent accumulation of additional time and costs.

This step can be executed as part of a lifecycle process or completed manually.

For more information: 

• Reviewing or Modifying a Strategic Entity's Details