Portfolio management course

Agility requires effective control

How do you set up decision-making on development initiatives (such as projects, programmes, epics and features) in an organisation in such a way that it is effectively managed? How do you create the overview, insight and perspective, without it becoming a syrupy bureaucracy? How do you jointly determine the optimal prioritisation in the portfolio of those initiatives? How do you create an optimal balance between 'maintaining' and 'innovating'? How do you deal with 'side-flyers'? How do you ensure more coherence? How do you work better together in situations with projects and agile teams? And, how do you include everyone so that it works?

You will learn this in the Portfolio Management Course, a series of eight meetings in which you will explore the field together with peers and use your own cases to reflect on together.

Participants

The course is designed for both experienced and novice professionals, who are responsible for managing a portfolio of development initiatives in their organisation, profit or non-profit. Such as portfolio managers, business change managers, transition managers, programme managers, release train managers, portfolio analysts and PMO managers. For them, this course offers the optimal opportunity for hands-on professionalisation.

Participants are expected to master the principles of project-based working and agile working. Knowledge of methods such as MoP, MoV, MSP, Project-based Creation, PRINCE2, Stage Gate, Kanban, Scrum and SAFe is a plus but not a must.

Programme schedule

Implementing portfolio management is dynamic, involving hard and soft aspects, structure and culture. Theories seem logical, practice is obstinate. The answer is the Portfolio Management Course! In 8 half-day sessions, together with colleagues from other organisations, you will discover how to tackle the issues.

The guide is the recent book 'Portfolio management, making strategic choices together' (2025), which contains material from this course and ten real-life case studies.

Participants bring in their own cases, from their own organisations, and reflect on them together based on their learning questions. In this way, they constantly exchange concrete examples and learn about challenges, solutions, approaches and pitfalls. This stimulates application of what is learned in their own working environment and thus promotes active learning.

In terms of topics, we follow the implementation steps from the book (chapter structure, see diagram). We thus explore both theoretically and practically the mechanisms that help to get an overview, insight and perspective of the portfolio of development initiatives. You will also be introduced to PPM FLOW! - a portfolio management method that matches the development stages of organisations, thereby increasing the chances of success.

To best suit the needs of the participants, we explore individual learning goals and starting points in the first meeting.

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Times and location

One of the participants after the apprenticeship: "I have made great strides with theory and toolbox, but in our own organisation there is still much to develop, I will now continue to build on that."

The sessions are every other week on Friday mornings from 08:30 to 12:30. The first meeting covers the first 2 sessions, together the whole day. The registration form on page 3 lists the dates, which can be varied by mutual agreement if required.

Location: Utrecht West, Zonnebaan 9 (Improven office)
Group size: up to 7 participants
Certificate: At the end of the course, participants will receive a certificate of participation.

Data

Spring 2025: 8 sessions, on 11/04 (2x, full day), 25/04, 09/05, 23/05, 06/06, 20/06, 04/07*

Autumn 2025: 8 sessions, on 19/09 (2x, full day), 03/10, 17/10, 31/11, 14/11, 28/11, 14/12*

* Dates to be finalised in consultation

Guidance

This course is delivered by Jan Bloem (1957). He is associated with Improven and PPMpro as senior consultant, programme manager and portfolio manager. He has organised the PPM Annual Conference since 2004 and is author of the book 'Portfolio management, making strategic choices together' (2025). He is also spiritual father of PPM FLOW!

Jan can be reached at +31 6 53 63 63 06