Portfolio Assessment

An assessment of certainty and complexity can also provide useful information when looking at an overall portfolio of projects. The most critical consideration is that the organization should not try to take on more projects in any particular quadrant than it has capable leaders for those projects. This constraint is particularly applicable for bull projects. An organization is unlikely to have a large number of project leaders who are capable of delivering on bull projects.

A typical portfolio will consist of projects that are distributed throughout the four quadrants of the Context Leadership Model (as shown in Figure 4.6). In the example shown in Figure 4.6, a high percentage of projects is in the sheepdog category. Obviously, a younger or very established organization might have a project distribution that skews in one direction or another. The important thing is to make sure that, whatever the distribution is, the organization understands the reasons for that distribution and then builds the organizational capacity to make those projects happen.