Feature 1 of 8 · Portfolio
Portfolio & Health
One view of every project you answer for, grouped by client and programme, and each project judged on what its contract actually pays for. Leaders see where to look first and why, without asking for a status update.
The idea in one minute
Most portfolio views judge every project against the same yardstick. PMO Assist doesn't. A fixed-price project lives or dies on schedule; a dedicated-capacity team on whether the seats are filled; time and materials and managed service on whether work is flowing. Each project's overall health is the dimension its delivery model is paid on, and a red anywhere else still pulls a green project down to amber, so nothing serious hides behind a good headline.
How the portfolio is organised
| Level | What it is |
|---|---|
| Account | The client. People hold a role on it: Viewer, Manager, Admin or Owner. |
| Programme | A body of work under one account. Optional. |
| Project | Where delivery happens: work, sprints, releases, milestones, team. |
| Workstream | The whole project, or each epic, chosen when the project is created. Releases, milestones and the weekly status follow it. |
| Delivery model | How it is contracted | Judged on |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed price | Agreed scope for an agreed fee. Overruns cost margin. | Schedule |
| Dedicated capacity | The client buys allocated capacity. | Staffing |
| Time & materials | The client pays for hours actually logged. | Flow |
| Managed service | A recurring fee for run and support, against service levels. | Flow |
A project with no delivery model is left out of portfolio figures rather than guessed at. A dimension with nothing to judge reads Not enough data, never green.
The three health dimensions
Each is rated On track, At risk, Off track or Not enough data, with the reason beside it.
| Dimension | Measures | Off track | At risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Schedule | Milestones against their committed baselines | Any milestone overdue | Any at risk |
| Staffing | Hours reserved against hours the work needs, next four weeks | Short by a quarter or more, or nobody allocated | Short by less, or people reserved with no planned work |
| Flow | Open work past its due date | 30% or more overdue | 10% or more |
The rating is kept once a day. Each one says how long it has stood and what it was before (At risk for 9 days, was on track), and when a project gets worse, its lead and its account's managers are told once, with the reason.
Warnings before the rating turns
| Warning | When |
|---|---|
| Due soon | An open milestone's baseline is within 7 days. |
| Still moving | A milestone's expected date slipped at each of the last three weekly readings, or it was re-baselined twice or more. |
| Release at risk | The next release is due within 14 days and too little of it is done. |
| Stale blocker | The same item is a blocker in the two latest published weekly reports. |
| Gone quiet | No weekly status published in 14 days, or no time logged in 7 working days. |
| Report out of date | The last delivery report called a better status than health reads now. |
Where leaders work
The Portfolio has its own sidebar. Pick the accounts, programmes or projects at the top, and every page follows.
| Page | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Overview | The whole picture, in the order it is read: key figures, needs attention, health, milestones and releases, staffing and budget, blockers and sprints, reports. |
| Needs attention | Everything that is wrong, act-now before watch, with one link each. |
| Health | How each project is rated, why, for how long, and the next step. |
| Milestones · Releases · Sprints | What is late, at risk or due; what ships when; which sprints are off track. |
| Blockers | What is blocked, for how long, and what waits on it. |
| Trends | How each project's velocity and throughput are moving. |
| Budget | How far through its budget or allocation each project is. |
| Staffing | Hours needed against reserved over 4, 8 or 12 weeks, and who is free to take on more. |
| Exceptions | Which overbooked allocations wait on my decision as a line manager. |
| Weekly status | What happened across my projects this week, in one table and one exportable deck. |
Money: what is there today
- Cost per hour on every allocation, and a Team cost panel on each project: planned cost, actual to date, still to spend and the blended rate.
- Budget burn for dedicated capacity compares hours delivered with hours allocated over four weeks. For fixed price and time and materials it shows spend against a budget where one has been recorded.
- Only people who staff a project see its amounts. Viewers see ratings without figures.
Contract value, bill rates, margin forecasts and a screen to enter a project's budget. Budget is not yet a health dimension.
Why it matters for leadership
- Fewer status meetings. The reason behind every rating is on the page.
- Fair comparison. Projects are judged on what the client pays for, not one generic RAG.
- Early warning. Slipping milestones, staffing gaps and quiet projects show up before they become escalations.
Step by step: Portfolio and health and Accounts and programmes in the User guide.