Strategic portfolio management
Also called: SPM · strategic portfolio management tools
The discipline — and tool category — that connects strategy to the portfolio of investments, initiatives and capabilities that is meant to deliver it.
Strategic portfolio management is the discipline of deciding, funding and steering the portfolio of investments, initiatives and capabilities through which an organization delivers its strategy. Where project portfolio management asks whether projects are delivered on time and on budget, strategic portfolio management asks whether the portfolio as a whole is the right one: which capabilities the strategy needs, which initiatives build them, and where to shift funding when priorities change. As a tool category it covers the software that keeps strategy, portfolio and capabilities in one model. Forrester evaluates the market in The Forrester Wave™: Strategic Portfolio Management Tools, Q2 2026, and treats business architecture and capability-based planning as part of the category.
The separating question is what the portfolio is measured against. A portfolio tracked by milestones and spend measures activity; one whose initiatives are tied to the capabilities they improve, and those capabilities to the indicators of the processes that exercise them, measures whether the investment moved the strategy.
In Dexon BPM that second kind of measurement is the traceability chain itself: strategy, capability, process and indicator in one model, with each indicator computed on the operational records of the process that delivers it.
On this site: Strategy execution →