Prioritization and Scenario Analysis
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Prioritization and Scenario Analysis
The Prioritization and Scenario Analysis capability supports the collection and assessment of all investments before the portfolio plan approval, and the creation and comparison of what-if scenarios. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.
Prioritization and Scenario Analysis Business Outcomes
We can consistently align and rank potential investments based on our organization’s priorities and drivers.
We can analyze our new investments’ impact against the existing portfolio of approved investments.
We can analyze an investment portfolio against a time-phased financial budget or target, and understand how trade-off decisions might impact our ability to deliver the portfolio targets within that budget/target.
We can create investment what-if scenarios.
We can share decisions about potential investments across the organization.
Prioritization and Scenario Analysis Processes
Prioritization and scenario analysis is a powerful capability that supports portfolio investment decision-making by leveraging what-if scenario planning. By allowing you to create and compare hypothetical scenarios on all potential and active investments, you can view the impact of trade-off decisions and decide which investments to prioritize based on your financial and capacity targets. The iterative planning process ensures that your portfolio has the agility to reprioritize and take in new unplanned work as priorities shift and circumstances change.
Prioritization and Scenario Analysis Process Steps
Prioritization and Scenario Analysis provides a mechanism to collect all potential and existing investments for prioritization and assessment before the overall portfolio plan is approved. As part of this, planners can create and compare various what-if scenarios. In Planview Enterprise One, Prioritization and Scenario Analysis is typically performed in tandem with the Capacity Planning, which provides the mechanism to set resource capacity time-phased targets at the relevant organizational level. These targets can be used to analyze demand and make assessments on the organization's ability to continue with or adopt new investments.
Capacity Planning Process Flow
Process Step | Description |
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Create/update the portfolio to include all investments that are ready for analysis/approval |
A Planning portfolio defines the capacity and demand entities to be used in investment analysis, i.e. where and which targets and demand you wish to analyze in a specified time range (Planning Horizon). Demand requirements for analysis of investments:
For more information: |
Create a scenario |
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: |
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: |
Rank and prioritize investments |
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.
Planning Manager tile—ranking investments
Planning Manager tile's Rank view—rank investments automatically |
Analyze against portfolio target |
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":
Planning Manager tile – analyzing investments |
Shift investment dates and durations |
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.
Planning Manager tile—shifting investments
Planning Manager—Shift Highlighting Bottom Tray Details
Planning Manager tile—shift-highlighting the bottom tray details |
Balance against capacity |
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:
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.
Planning Manager tile—balancing investments |
Baseline portfolio |
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.
Planning Manager tile—Planned Investments pivot view
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.
Planning Manager tile—Approval Decisions pivot view |
Compare scenarios |
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. |
Publish portfolio decisions and adjustments |
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.
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.
Planning Manager tile—publish from the shared scenario
Planning Manager tile—publish from scenarios created by users (non-shared) |
Close investment |
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: |
Outputs, Reports, and Analytics
This solution capability is supported by the following outputs, reports, and analytics:
Type | Associated Outputs, Reports, and Analytics | Description |
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Screen | Investment and Capacity Planning | Pivot to different views that guide you through the process of investment and capacity planning. These views help you analyze capacity and demand data in multiple ways by examining different capacity and demand dimensions. Some views let you compare scenarios to display information that assists you in understanding the impact investment decisions within different scenarios have on balancing demand with capacity. |
Analytic | WRK31 - Work Portfolio Financial Analysis | Work portfolio report that allows the analysis of project and portfolio financial plan data, including effort (FTEs/Days/Hours) or financial data (Cost/Benefit/Revenue). A single financial planning version is selected and the data type selected based on type and/or specific accounts. The slicer can be any work alternate structure or a line attribute of the selected accounts. |
Analytic | WRK32 - Work Portfolio Financial Burndown Comparison | Work portfolio report that allows the comparison of one/many versions of project and portfolio financial plan data, including effort (FTEs/Days/Hours) or financial data (Cost/Benefit/Revenue). |
Analytic | WRK33 - Project Cost or Revenue/Benefit Bubble | Work portfolio report that can select cost or revenue/benefit based measures from the financial planning data to drive bubble size. |
Analytic | WRK34 - Work Portfolio Investment Balance Bubble | Work portfolio report, based on financial plan data, where the user can select benefit/revenue measures for the X axis, cost-based measures for the bubble size, and a risk-based attribute for the Y axis. |
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