Z1 – Manage follow-up items

What

In this activity, we continuously manage global follow-up items (risks, issues, change requests, improvement plans, and lessons learned).

Why

Most follow-up items impact a single program or project and are managed locally. However, there are also global ones that impact multiple programs and projects and need to be managed in an integrated, holistic way in the portfolio management layer in order to be more effective.

Who

The portfolio manager is the main facilitator in this activity and works closely with custodians.

How

Program and project managers may identify global follow-up items (e.g., in activity D01 of P3.express). When this happens, they should immediately communicate it to the portfolio manager.

The portfolio manager should monitor the local registers continuously to find patterns that can lead to identification of global follow-up items.

When a new item is added to the Global Follow-Up Register,

• one of the portfolio board members, program managers, or project managers should be assigned to it as its custodian to follow up on and update its status, and
• custodians should inform managers of all programs and projects that may be impacted by the item of its existence.

The portfolio manager should be in touch with custodians about the status of their follow-up items and ensure that all of them are followed up on until closed.

When the portfolio manager realizes that a follow-up item can have a significant impact on the Value Generation Matrix, they should run an exceptional 6-Monthly Cycle. Otherwise, the portfolio manager is authorized to decide how to respond to those items. The portfolio manager may get help from program and project managers to design the responses.

The related organizational processes and policies documented in the Portfolio Description should be carefully followed in this activity.