How do we maintain a useful project inventory?
Unreliable portfolio baselineKeep a small authoritative set of fields that supports ownership, purpose, status, funding, and capacity decisions. Assign update responsibility and retire records when appropriate.
What to do now
- Define essential inventory fields
- Reconcile active initiatives across departments
- Assign record owners and update expectations
- Review stale or duplicate entries
When to escalate
Escalate when
Material work or commitments are missing from the inventory.
Who decides
The portfolio decision authority
Example
Each active initiative has a sponsor, outcome, current stage, next decision, and responsible manager.
Mistake to avoid
Building a large catalog that nobody maintains.
Prevent a repeat
Review whether active commitments fit available capacity and current priorities rather than just tracking project counts.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Projects
- Resources
- Documents
- Approvals
Use project and capacity records to support portfolio decisions, then record approved priorities and consequences explicitly. See the platform
Related cases
- The same dependency appears in many project plans. Who should own it?Shared dependency governance
- A small project blocks a major program. How should priority change?Dependency-based portfolio priority
- How do we distinguish an issue from a change request?Resolution-versus-baseline decision
- Our risk estimates are guesses. Can they still be useful?Weak risk evidence