Product strategy

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Overview | Portfolio management | Platforms | Style guides

Portfolio management

Portfolio management ensures effective resource allocation to meet the short and long-term needs of the organisation. The key goals of portfolio management are to

  • Maximise the value of the portfolio
  • Ensure a balance between risk and reward
  • Ensure strategic alignment within the company
  • Match the projects with available resources

In managing a portfolio, one approach to maximising returns and minimising the number of projects being considered is to identify projects that have common needs and can be addressed as platform projects.

This approach can effectively address a variety of user needs, with a range of related products built around a common technology platform. For example, automotive companies use a portfolio approach to provide a variety of performance or styling options to the customer, delivered within the budget of a single product development cycle.

Within a portfolio is a style guide, which can be applied to multiple platforms and their products, also contained in that portfolio.

A portfolio contains platforms and style guides, and each platform can be used to generate multiple products

High reward with low risk is rare but lucrative, low reward and low risk offers common incremental gain, high reward and high risk offers a few long shots, while high risk and low reward should be avoided.

Portfolios should be managed to ensure a balance between risk and reward