Portfolio management

Portfolio management

Preamble

Portfolios are a way of organising your numerous projects and activities to make them easier to access and manage.
You can work with a single portfolio or create several.
Generally a portfolio is composed of a group of projects and/or activities that have something in common: a strategic issue (business, compliance, etc.), a type of project (business, technical, etc.), an organisation (subsidiary 1, subsidiary 2, holding)

Portfolio management

Create

From the dashboard , Portfolios Review, you access an overview of your portfolios.
            

Below the table on the left, click Add Portfolio : 
     
      

The following information is required :
  1. Portfolio name (mandatory)
  2. Portfolio manager
  3. Status: active (default). For more details, see the “Portfolio life cycle” section.
  4. Description

Edit

Characteristics can be modified from the global view of projects, in the advanced menu to the right of the portfolio line :

In the editing popup, you will find the same information as during creation.

Deleting

You can delete a portfolio from the Project global view, in the advanced menu to the right of the portfolio line.

To delete a portfolio, it must not contain any project or activity. If you only have archived items left in this portfolio, simply deactivate it to no longer see it in your overall view.

Portfolio lifecycle

When you initialise your Abraxio environment, a Project portfolio and an Activity portfolio are created by standard.
You can of course rename or delete them if they are not defined as standard.
The standard portfolios are defined in the Admin/Configuration/Portfolios module. For full documentation, follow this link. 

A portfolio has 2 states:
  1. Active : proposed during creation/modification of a project/activity
  2. Inactive : no longer proposed during creation/modification of a project/activity but may still exist on an old project. Note that in the global view of portfolios, you will find all active portfolios + all inactive portfolios that still contain non-archived projects.
This state can be modified in the portfolio edit popup.
By managing this status, you can modify the structure (list) of your portfolios as you go along, without losing information about old projects/activities.

Viewing portfolios

Left list of projects and activities

In the list on the left, projects and activities are grouped by Stage then by portfolio.
This makes it very easy to locate a Project or Activity, view its status and open it with a single click.

      

Portfolios View

From the dashboard , Portfolios Review, you access the overview of your portfolios with KPIs and the summary of unarchived projects/activities by portfolio.
  1. You can filter by "Nature" (Activity and/or Project) or by portfolio to refine your view. As a reminder, the scope viewed depends on your authorizations.
  1. Clicking on a line in the table takes you to a detailed view of the portfolio in the Projects or Activities tab, depending on its content. If your portfolio contains both Activities and Projects, you will be taken to the Project Review tab.

Project Review and Activities Review - Table

The detailed Portfolios view is a real management tool with many features.

This view is composed of a filter bar which allows you to select a set of coherent projects or activities ("All projects currently being implemented", "All projects in qualification", "All projects which impact the 'year N in terms of planning or budget', etc.).

Filter criteria:
  1. Portfolios : selection from 1 to N portfolios
  2. Nature
  3. Stages
  4. Status
  5. Time range
These filters can be supplemented by table column filters.

On the projects/activities reviews, you can:
  1. Sort and filter columns
  2. Group columns on several levels
  3. Select the columns to be displayed
You can also create your own custom views and access them quickly using the View combobox :

      
A view can store a list of columns, filters, sorts and groupings. With this feature, you can create views adapted to each work situation.
These views are shared with all users.

To create or modify a view:
  1. Click on the cogwheel
  2. Select/deselect the columns
  3. Enter/modify view name
  4. Save
      
For projects, Abraxio offers by standard 4 non-modifiable views :
  2. Projects - To Arbitrate:  suitable for arbitration of new requested projects
  3. Projects - To qualify : suitable for viewing new requests
  4. Projects - Last flash reports : suitable to view the last published Flash reports
  5. Projects - In progress : suitable for reviewing Opened projects
Abraxio offers a project evaluation system to facilitate arbitration and bring out projects with higher added value.

For activities, Abraxio offers 2 non-modifiable views by default:
  1. Activities- Last flash reports : suitable to view the last published Flash reports
  2. Activities - In progress : suitable for reviewing opened activities

Projects View - Gantt Planning

In the top right-hand corner of the Projects view, you can switch from table mode to Gantt Planning mode in just one click, while keeping your selection of projects.
You can use the filter bar to adjust your selection.
Find out more about Scheduling Gantt by following this link.
      

Workload analysis

Workload plan views are genuine management tools for checking that production capacity matches the staffing requirements expressed.
  1. Thus, in the short term, these tools can be used to check that resources are being used properly and that planned workloads can be allocated.
  2. They can be used to identify when it is possible to start a new project with regard to its staffing requirements, or to anticipate the need for external recruitment or reinforcement.

Assignments View

The assignments view consolidates the workload plans of the projects and activities that you are authorized to consult. More precisely, it presents, by Project/Activity, the staffing requirements, the planned assignments and those still to be carried out.

You can apply filters to analyse a particular scope more precisely: a portfolio, current projects, assignments over the next 3 months, etc.

2 very important filter indicators are accessible at the top right of the screen:
  1. Over-assignment : shows you the number of Collaborators affected by over-assignment in the selected timeframe. Click to filter out the over-assignment lines for these Collaborators. Click again to remove the filter.
  2. Remaining to be assigned: This shows you the number of MD (Man Day) remaining to be assigned to Collaborators in the selected timeframe, based on the staffing requirements expressed for Projects/Activities. By clicking, you then filter on all the rows still to be assigned.
Various utilities are available in the table header: 
  1. A full-text search box in all the columns shown and those that can be activated via the display configuration :
    1. Example: "Peter" will filter all rows for which the first name "Peter" is entered (i.e. if "Peter" is a Project Manager, the assignments for this Project will also appear, although this column is not displayed on the screen).
    2. You can filter several words separated by a space. Examples: "DEV ASSIGN" will filter all the lines for which the words "DEV" AND "ASSIGN" are present.
  2.  allows you to select the unit shown in the table
  3.  allows you to display, in addition to the MD (Man Day) allocated/remaining to be allocated, the Consumption or availability of the Collaborators.
Finally, on the left of each Project/Activity line, you can :
  1. open the task manager and create a task for the Project Manager, for example, to modify his or her assignments
  2. access details of the workload schedule for the Project or Activity.

Capacity planning

The Capacity planning allows you to view the assignment needs of each project/activity for each of your skills profiles, and to compare the capacity to meet these needs.

In this way, by month and by profile, you can identify whether the requirement can be met and whether the occupancy rate of your Collaborators is sufficient.
"The aim of the game" is therefore to balance the system in the short term and then in the medium term, overall and then by skill profile, taking all Collaborators together and then distinguishing between Internal/External.      

For the selected timeframe, 2 very important indicators give you information on :
  1. Over-staffing : for months when requirements exceed the capacity of Collaborators, you can see the extent of over-staffing and therefore the level of over-staffing at a macro level.
  2. Availability: for months when the capacity of your Collaborators exceeds requirements, you can see the extent of availability and therefore the level of under-staffing at a macro level.
Various utilities are available in the table header: 
  1. A full-text search box to filter lines:
  2. allows you to select the unit used in the table
  3. allows you to filter on internal, external or all collaborators (default).
Finally, on the left on each project/activity line, you can:
  1. open the task manager and create a task for the Project Manager, for example, to modify his or her assignments
  2. access the details of the project or activity workload plan
To access this view, you must have full access to the Projects/Activities and their budgets, otherwise the Needs/Capacity comparison cannot be done.
When managing user authorisations, it is therefore necessary to have an "All" scope for projects/activities and Sub-budgets.

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