WorkBoard Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is a platform for planning and governing your organization's strategic investments. It brings portfolios, initiatives and programs together in one place, with full visibility into their costs, resources, risks and decisions, and a governed process for evaluating and approving new work requests.
Key concepts
Concept | What it is |
Space | A part of your organization, such as a business unit or region. Every portfolio belongs to a Space, and the Space controls who can see it |
Portfolio | A group of related strategic investments. It has an owner, a status, a planning horizon, funding and a priority, and rolls up the cost of its initiatives. |
Initiative | A unit of deliverable work with its own status, health, time horizon, funding, financials, resources, risks and decisions. It sits in one or more portfolios. |
Program | A delivery unit inside an initiative. It can connect to a Jira or Azure DevOps project, a Smartsheet sheet, a monday.com board or a WorkBoard workstream. |
Intake request | A request for new work, submitted through Intake. It moves through phases such as Intake, Validation, Prioritization and Awaiting approval, and ends as Converted, Declined, Deferred or Archived. |
Risk | A tracked concern on a portfolio or initiative, with a severity, a probability and a status. |
Decision | A record of a material choice: what was decided, who captured it and why. A decision can't be rewritten after it's saved. |
Scenario | A what-if alternative to the plan: either one Bo, the Portfolio Agent, builds for you, or a Monte Carlo simulation you set up yourself. |
Your organization can rename Portfolio, Initiative, Program and Roadmap to match the words it uses, so you may see different labels in your SPM.
Find your way around
Left navigation
Item | What you'll find there |
Brief | The Executive Brief: a one-page view of what needs leadership attention |
Strategies | The strategies your portfolios support |
Portfolios | The portfolio home page (see Create and manage portfolios) |
Initiatives | Every initiative you can see |
Roadmaps | Roadmaps that sequence initiative delivery over time |
Resources | Capacity, utilization and unmet demand across your portfolios |
Scenarios | Ask Bo for alternatives to the plan, or run Monte Carlo simulations |
Financials | Cost and value entries across all your portfolios |
Intake | Submit a request, track your own requests, and review and approve requests |
Reports & Dashboards | Dashboards the Portfolio Analyst has created for you |
Admin | SPM administration: Spaces, users, roles, access bindings, terminology and organization settings |
The items you see depend on your role and on the features your organization has switched on.
Top bar
From left to right:
Apps (the nine-dot launcher): switch to other WorkBoard apps, such as WoBo OKRs, WoBo Strategy and WoBo Canvas. Configuration is here too:
Search SPM: jump straight to any item (see Search below).
Use Search SPM in the top bar to go straight to an item:Type at least two characters of a name or phrase;
Results appear as you type, grouped by type: Portfolio, Initiative, Program, Risk, Decision and Comment. Each result shows the portfolio or initiative it belongs to;
Select a result to open it. Risks, decisions, programs and comments open on the initiative or portfolio they belong to.
Search only returns items you have access to. If nothing matches, you'll see "Nothing you can see matches that."
Portfolio Analyst: opens Bo, SPM's AI assistant, in a new tab:
Shared with me (the share icon): the portfolios, initiatives and roadmaps other people have shared with you.
The bell: shows how many unread notifications you have. Select it to open your notification feed. To choose what reaches you, see Your preferences and notifications:
Your avatar: the account menu, with Preferences, Settings (custom attributes) and Sign out:
Get set up in five minutes
Choose your landing page - select your avatar, then Preferences, and pick a Landing page.
Choose your notifications - in Preferences, select Notifications and switch Email, Slack or Teams on or off for each type.
Open a portfolio - on the Portfolios page, select a portfolio and look through its tabs and side panels.
Try search - type the name of an initiative you work on into Search SPM.
Meet the Portfolio Analyst - select Portfolio Analyst in the top bar and try a starter prompt such as Portfolio health.
Where to go next
If you are a... | Start here |
Portfolio manager | Create and manage portfolios |
Initiative owner or contributor | Create and manage initiatives |
Finance partner | Initiative and portfolio financials |
Resource or capacity planner | Resource and capacity planning |
Anyone with an idea or need | Submit and track a request |
Reviewer or approver | Review and approve requests |
Executive | Executive Brief |