PfMS 2025 Q&A #4: What are the future trends for portfolio management as a profession?

by | Jun 6, 2025 | Portfolio Management, Portfolio Management Summit 2025

(Future): What are the future trends for portfolio management as a profession?

Synthesized by Te Wu. Specific contributors include:

    • Cédric Kahl
    • Cristina Niculescu
    • David Vincenti
    • Kris Sprague
    • Lars Hansen
    • Todd Generotzke
    • Anonymous

As organizations navigate an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) environment, the traditional role of portfolio management (PfM) is undergoing a profound transformation. Once primarily tethered to scope, time, and budget considerations, PfM is evolving into a strategic discipline that balances long-term value creation with agility, stakeholder engagement, and rapid responsiveness to change.

A clear trend is the structural and functional distinction between the Project Management Office (PMO) and Portfolio Management. While the PMO retains responsibility for executional oversight and resource coordination, PfM is emerging as a more analytical and consultative function, focused on strategy, value realization, and informed decision-making. As this divide widens, the need for clarity in roles—and for cross-functional alignment—becomes essential.

Contemporary scholarship, including the work of Martinsuo and Geraldi (2020), positions PfM as a semi-permanent organizational form—more stable than projects, yet more dynamic than traditional line management. Hansen and Svejvig (2022) propose a future-oriented model built around five interdependent forces—the 5Ts:

  • Team (ecosystem collaboration),
  • Task (shift from product to service orientation),
  • Time (circular and sustainable delivery),
  • Transition (continuous value justification), and
  • Tension (navigating economic, environmental, and societal pressures).

These forces signal that PfM must move toward a principle-based model, guiding action not through rigid prescriptions but through adaptable strategic thinking—resilient in the face of continuous disruption. Just as Sun Tzu’s The Art of War endures for its strategic insights, portfolio principles must offer timeless relevance.

Technology is rapidly reshaping the PfM landscape. Traditionally, PfM has not been well adopted due to additional managerial overhead and frankly the challenge of developing good PfM processes, especially around governance.  Frankly, for most organizations, “just do it” is more practical than formal deliberation. But with artificial intelligence, predictive analytics, and real-time dashboards (e.g., Power BI, Office 365 Copilot), portfolio managers can now anticipate risks, dynamically reprioritize projects, and align portfolios to Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) with precision and ease. Automation not only enables faster decisions but also facilitates better resource allocation in environments of constrained capacity. AI-driven forecasting, ESG considerations, and sustainability metrics are now part of the decision-making matrix.

However, maturity varies. Many organizations still rely on politically charged or intuition-based project selection. Others operate in a fragmented state—acknowledging PfM’s importance but lacking formal structures. Only a few have institutionalized PfM, using it as a lever for strategic clarity and operational discipline.

To thrive, portfolio managers must evolve into value custodians—not only tracking outcomes but shaping them. This involves building integrated value frameworks, adopting a customer-centric mindset, and embracing a consulting posture rooted in market awareness and continuous learning. As global competition intensifies and investment constraints tighten, organizations will increasingly rely on portfolio management to navigate trade-offs, maximize ROI, and drive meaningful impact.

In short, the portfolio management profession is being reinvented—not by discarding its foundations, but by expanding its relevance through data, technology, and strategic foresight.

Contribution by: Cédric Kahl

In my experience and based on job market observations, organizations typically fall into one of three categories when it comes to portfolio management maturity. Some do not perceive its value and therefore rely on subjective and likely politically driven project selection and prioritization processes. Others acknowledge its importance but hesitate to invest in a formal structure, resulting in fragmented efforts without a dedicated portfolio manager. Finally, some fully recognize both the strategic and operational value of portfolio management and take steps to institutionalize it by establishing a dedicated function that enables structured selection and prioritization, as well as continuous improvement of portfolio practices.

With ongoing globalization, growth in developing markets, and increasing pressure to maximize return on investment (particularly in industries facing revenue stagnation due to intense price competition) building competencies to support informed decision-making will become more and more critical. Organizations with limited investment capacity will increasingly depend on portfolio management to balance risk appetite with strategic goals.

 

Contribution by: Cristina Niculescu

In this dynamic world, where everything is changing rapidly, the traditional role of the Portfolio Manager is being redefined, our profession needs to be reinvented. Now it is more about ownership, value, outcomes, not only about delivering in scope, time and budgets. When we are speaking of value and outcome, we are speaking about the quality of the service delivered, the real value it brings to the customer, how fast we can deliver. The Portfolio Manager should adopt a customer-centric approach, being also resilient, flexible, but most important acting as a consultant, being up to date with the trends in the market. Speaking of how fast we deliver, we need to implement various tools which can help us automate activities, or give us relevant data to take rapid decisions. Nowadays Data is power, so we need to learn how to use this. Use cases where the Portf Manager role should be specialized on: Dynamic reprioritization with real-time data, Integration with OKRs, AI-driven forecasting

 

Contribution by: David Vincenti

PfM is separating from the PMO in some companies, with PfM more analytical and strategic, PMO more transactional and focused on progress management. Resource management, for example, is a PMO responsibility that will be invisible to portfolio managers. I see a gap growing between these two roles, even when they exist in the same organizational group.

 

Contribution by: Kris Sprague

The future of portfolio management is characterized by increased reliance on technology, data-driven decision-making, and evolving client expectations, including a growing focus on  Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) and sustainable investing.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are expected to play a significant role in enhancing risk management, optimizing portfolios, and automating tasks.

 

Contribution by: Lars Hansen

The project portfolio management profession can be seen as handling a semi-permanent organizational form—more stable than individual projects, yet more flexible than traditional line structures (Martinsuo and Geraldi, 2020) (Martinsuo & Geraldi, 2020). Its future is shaped by changes in five interrelated elements, defined as the 5Ts: Team, Task, Time, Transition, and Tension (Hansen and Svejvig, 2022).

  • Team refers to the shift from operating within a single focal organization to engaging with a broader ecosystem of partners and stakeholders.
  • Task highlights the move from delivering products to creating services and experiences as we have learned from Lusch and Vargo (2006) .
  • Time captures the growing emphasis on circular thinking over traditional linear delivery models (as we see in DEVOPS delivery models), with sustainability and long-term value at the forefront.
  • Transition reflects the portfolio as an ever-changing entity, which must continuously justify its existence by delivering value (Ang et al., 2022).
  • Tension represents the constant balancing act that Ramanna (2022) Ramanna (2024) describes as the “age of outrage,” a perfect storm of economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological pressures. These forces continuously push organizations to reconfigure their project portfolios and supply chains.

In response to this increasing uncertainty, portfolio management must become principle-based. Principles do not prescribe specific actions in a given situation; rather, they guide how we think about and navigate complexity (Hansen and Svejvig, 2023). This approach supports flexibility, adaptation, and resilience in an increasingly volatile world. Principles can also be remarkably enduring. For example, The Art of War by Sun Tzu, written 2,500 years ago, still informs modern strategic thinking because of the timeless relevance of its principles.

Recent scholarly work supports this shift toward a principle-based approach. Researchers such as Joslin and Müller (2023) , along with contributions in leading management journals  (e.g.,  Fuchs et al., 2023) , have laid important groundwork for advancing this perspective within project portfolio management.

References:

  • FUCHS, J., SANDELL, S. & SHANKER, V. 2023. It’s Time to Define Your Company’s Principles. Harvard Business Review, 101, 122-131.
  • HANSEN, L. K. & SVEJVIG, P. 2022. Seven Decades of Project Portfolio Management Research (1950–2019) and Perspectives for the Future. Project Management Journal, 1-18.
  • HANSEN, L. K. & SVEJVIG, P. 2023. Principles in Project Portfolio Management: Building Upon What We Know to Prepare for the Future. Project Management Journal, 1-22.
  • JOSLIN, R. & MÜLLER, R. 2023. Organizational, Portfolio, Program, and Project Principles, Wollerau, Switzerland, AIPMO.
  • LUSCH, R. F. & VARGO, S. L. 2006. Service-dominant logic: reactions, reflections and refinements. Marketing theory, 6, 281-288.
  • MARTINSUO, M. & GERALDI, J. 2020. Management of project portfolios: Relationships of project portfolios with their contexts. International Journal of Project Management, 37, 441-453.
  • RAMANNA, K. 2022. Managing in the Age of Outrage. Available at SSRN 4142770.
  • RAMANNA, K. 2024. Unifying Leadership in a Divided Time. HBR IdeaCast. Harvard Business Review.

 

Contribution by: Todd Generotzke

While Portfolio management has existed as a topic for some time, the importance is emerging as a critical need for all organizations.  Time and budget are constraints in every company and executing the right projects at the right time is more crucial than ever.   Developing or having a process with which to govern and determine how a corporate portfolio is maintained is crucial to a company’s success in delivering the right products and services at the right time.

I feel that technology will continue to expand and enable portfolio managers to help organize complexity and do a better job of ‘herding the cats’. 

Portfolio managers will use tech and AI to assist in project prioritization, resource allocation, and risk forecasting. I feel that the use of predictive analytics combined with more real time and ‘intelligent’ dashboards will help connect data with portfolio strategy in real time or more quickly than current standards.

 

Contribution by: Anonymous

1) Integrated value frameworks for cross-functional alignment. 2) Improved portfolio health monitoring using tools like Power BI. Automate data analytics, automate actions and do more with less using Office 365 applications and Copilot.