Portfolio funding status

About this report

The Portfolio Funding Status report helps the Enterprise or Portfolio leadership team track the maturity of the investment opportunities (epics or projects) as they move from early identification, to funded, to completed. It is presented in a "funnel" shape to suggest that the role of the portfolio leadership is to narrow down the set of potential epics/projects as the business cases develop. The report is useful as a complement to the Portfolio Kanban view. While the Portfolio Kanban shows intermediate progress of epics moving towards the portfolio backlog, the Portfolio Funding Status report focuses on the fiduciary decisions made in that process flow, answering the question: which epics/projects have already been given the "green light"?

The chart should be used to monitor whether decision-making in the portfolio level is providing the upstream flow needed by the development pipeline. 

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1. Select the Reports icon from the left Navigation menu.
2. Start typing the report's name in the Search box. 
3. Once found, select the report.

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Prerequisites

1. A strategic snapshot has been created for the portfolio.
2. The snapshot is configured (assigned) to reference one or more program increments (PIs).
3. To see a strategic snapshot in the Snapshot list, you must be a team member of the program associated with a PI assigned to the strategic snapshot.
4. Epics have been identified and targeted to the PIs in the snapshot.
5. Epics (or projects) have set a budget on the Spend tab of the epic's Details panel.
6. Epics (or projects) have set the Funding Status on the Case Development tab of the epic's Details panel.
7. Epics (or projects) have set the State on the Details tab of the epic's Details panel.

How are report values calculated? 

Epics (or projects) are presented as square icons, in a column that is derived from the data input on the Epic page:

• Defined - Epics with a Funding Stage = "Defined", and State = "Not Started"
• Business Case - Epics with a Funding Stage = "Business Case", and State = "Not Started"
• Funded - Epics with a Funding Stage = "Funded", and State = "Not Started"
• In-Progress - Epics with a Funding Stage = "Funded", and State = "In-Progress"
• Done - Epics with a Funding Stage = "Funded", and State = "Accepted", that have a Completion Date within the last 12 months of today. 

The color of the square icon for each epic reflects the number of estimated hours on the epic, calculated as:

Estimated Hours = Sum of the estimated budgets assigned to the epic (across all the targeted PIs) in Team-Weeks (TW) * Average Team Size (default is a constant set to 6 people/team) * 40 hours/week. 

• (Red) No LOE Set: estimated hours <=2
• (Green) Less Than 1,500 Hours: 2 < estimated hours < 1500
• (Orange) 1.501 To 5,000 Hours: 1501 < estimated hours < 5000
• (Blue) Greater Than 5.000 Hours: estimated hours > 5000

How to interpret this report

A portfolio can look for the following health indicators in the Portfolio Funding Status report:

• There are some epics in the Funded column, ready to move moved to In-Progress. A portfolio can starve the development pipeline if it is not making timely funding decisions.
• There are more epics in the Defined column than the Business Case column. While other reports might present a better view of the WIP, this report can highlight when the number of epics maturing their business case exceeds the capacity of epic owners from the business team.
• There are more epics in the Business Case column than the Funded column. Ideally, epics will not spend much time in the Funded column before they move to In-Progress. When an epic has to wait in the Funded column, the business case may grow stale and need revisiting (e.g. assumptions are no longer valid).
• There is a balance of large epics and smaller epics. The colors provide a visual indicator of the needed budgets for the epics. Too many large epics is an early indicator for cycle time problems in development later. 
• The number of epics in the Done column is similar to the Defined/Business Case columns combined. Healthy product development flow requires the portfolio team to "prime the pump" with a backlog of epics, but to achieve business agility, the portfolio team should not maintain an excessively large backlog. If the amount of work under consideration is roughly matching the output of the portfolio in the last 12 months, then a good balance can be achieved.