Portfolio Management, Program Management and Project Management are distinct levels of how work is organized. Use Project Insight's System Administration to organize your projects under programs and those programs under portfolios, as shown in the project status report below:

Getting Started

When we say "Portfolio and Program Management," we are following the standard PMBOK organization. See the diagram below:

If your organization wants their projects associated with the programs they track and their programs to be associated with the portfolios they oversee, then look to Project Insight's User Defined Fields.

Setting Up Custom Fields

The most common way of gaining visibility and reporting on all three levels is to use the Custom Fields with Portfolio and Program labels. Navigate to Administration > Customization > Custom Fields and choose the Project item option. If you haven't added any already, the custom field list will be empty and give you the option to "Add Field."

Portfolio field

1. Make sure the field is marked Active for the field to show up in your project pages and reports
2. Enter the field name as Portfolio
3. Make sure to mark the Input Control as Combobox
4. The List Values that appear will need to be filled in as the names of your portfolios, mine are Portfolio ABCD and Portfolio EFGH
5. The Input and Display Location can either be kept on a separate tab on the project with the Normal (tab) option or on the General Tab high/low
6. For the fields to appear on your reporting options as a Filter and Group By, mark the check boxes shown in the screenshot below

Program field

Complete the same steps as the Portfolio field except for Step 4, where you need to add all of your Program Names as List Values and associate them to a Parent Portfolio. You must also select the Parent Combobox as, "Portfolio," which will be the only option if that is the first Combobox you have completed. 

Now that your two fields are Active and ready to go, they will appear in whichever location you specified in step 6. The preferred Input and Display Location is "Summary/General Tab (High)" so fields are easily visible when editing a project. 

Run Reports and Gain Visibility 

Once you've associated all of your projects to their appropriate Programs and Portfolios, you can now run a Project Report with Portfolio and Program visibility! On the Display Options, make sure you add Portfolio to the Group By first and then add Program to collapse and view at a high level. This will get any team up and running with using Portfolio and Program Management to gain visibility and strengthen the organization's work management.