Investment and capacity planning in Planview Portfolios: how it works and where teams get stuck

Project management is steering one ship. Portfolio management is orchestrating a fleet, and the hardest part is deciding which ships leave port when there are only so many crews to go around.

In Planview Portfolios, that decision runs through investment and capacity planning (ICP). It weighs the work people want to fund against the budget and people available to deliver it over time, so leaders can see what fits before they commit.

This post explains how ICP works in Planview Portfolios and where we see teams get stuck, whether they're setting it up for the first time or trying to fix a plan nobody trusts.

Investment planning vs. resource capacity planning

Investment planning decides which work gets funded. It ranks proposed projects, programs, and other investments by the value they're expected to deliver and how well they support strategy, then checks them against the budget.

Resource capacity planning decides whether that work can actually be done. It compares the roles and people each investment needs with what's available in each period, after the day-to-day work that keeps the business running.

Each answers only half the question. A ranked list with no capacity check leads to approving more than teams can deliver, and a capacity plan with no priorities can't tell you what to drop when demand runs over. ICP puts both in one place, so funding and staffing decisions are made together.

Why investment and capacity planning breaks down

The pattern we see most often is simple: the business approves more work than its teams can deliver. A few causes come up again and again:

• Capacity lives in spreadsheets. Each team tracks availability its own way, so no one can see across the portfolio, and the numbers are out of date before planning starts.
• Prioritization happens in meetings. Projects get labeled high, medium, or low with no shared scoring and no view of what each decision does to capacity.
• Planning is a once-a-year event. The annual plan takes months to build and starts drifting as soon as priorities change, so teams end up re-planning by hand.
• The tool arrives before the process. Teams that roll out portfolio software before deciding how they'll plan often end up working around it, and the tool takes the blame for a process problem.

How investment and capacity planning works in Planview Portfolios

Planview describes ICP as five steps, and each one builds on the one before it.

1. Determine capacity. Capacity can come from cost centers, work, strategies, or outcomes, depending on how your organization funds work. Budget targets are usually set with finance.
2. Identify demand. Proposed and in-flight investments are pulled into a planning portfolio with their cost and effort estimates. Projects with no financial data in the planning window aren't pulled in at all, which is one of the most common reasons a plan looks incomplete.
3. Rank and prioritize. Investments are ordered by scoring criteria, either automatically or by dragging them into place.
4. Model alternatives. Teams test options in scenarios before committing to anything.
5. Choose and publish. Once leaders agree, the decisions are published to the plan.

Most of this work happens in the Planning Manager, which gives four views of the same portfolio. Rank orders investments with their costs and benefits side by side. Analyze moves investments above or below the funding line to approve or defer them and shows the effect on budget and capacity. Shift shows where demand exceeds capacity by period and lets you move start dates and durations to fit. Balance compares the time-phased impact of accepted investments against capacity and budget targets.

Planning Manager, Rank view. Source: Planview Customer Success Center

Scenarios are where the real planning conversations happen. A shared scenario gives the team one proposed plan to review together, and user-defined scenarios let anyone test a change, like adding a project or pushing another back a quarter, without affecting the financial plan. Ranking and approval decisions take effect only when they're published.

Planning Manager, Shift view. Source: Planview Customer Success Center

Choosing a planning approach

Planview supports five ways to set up ICP, and the right one depends on how your organization funds work. Top-down work planning is the simplest place to start, and the others can be added as planning matures.

Start small, then build

Planview notes that some customers use only the first three steps, and that ranking and analyzing alone can be a valid place to stop. That's often the right first goal: one trusted view of what's being asked for, what's funded, and what teams can take on. Shifting dates and balancing against targets can come once the data underneath is reliable.

A few things make that first cycle go more smoothly:

• Plan against real availability. Use the time people actually have for project work, not 100% of their hours.
• Give every candidate an estimate. Even a rough cost or effort figure gets a project into the plan, and a blank one keeps it out.
• Test changes in what-if scenarios. Planview recommends user-defined scenarios over editing the shared one.
• Settle targets with finance before the cycle starts, since budgets and targets are usually maintained by hand.

How Virelli helps

Planview Portfolios can do a great deal, and most of the work in getting ICP right is in the setup: the planning approach, the data that feeds it, and the process around it. Our team has worked with Planview Portfolios customers for years, and we can help at whatever stage you're in. If you're getting started, our strategy and advisory and custom implementation services shape the planning approach and the data it needs. If ICP is already live but isn't working, a Solution Health Check looks at your configuration and process and lays out what to fix. And if you want ongoing support, managed services keep the setup current as your planning grows.

Frequently asked questions