Title banner that has the Rego Consulting logo and the phrase, "Let Rego Be Your Guide" The main text reads, "Clarity - Your Key to Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) Success" The "Clarity by Broadcom" logo is displayed at the bottom. The image shows a silhouette of a hiker in the shadow of a large light blue chess piece in the shape of a king, set against a topographic map background in shades of blue.

Strategy Casting – or Casting Strategy Aside?

Blue icon with a chess piece and football strategy symbols, including a football and directional arrow, indicating strategy

What can chess players and football coaches always agree on?

That strategy is important.

But what would happen if their strategy was not connected to their play-by-play action?

Winning goes out the window.

That may seem like a far-fetched scenario, but in a recent poll, Rego Consulting found that:

  • While 76% of organizations HAVE established a centralized statement for visions, mission, and values…
  • A staggering 65% of organizations are NOT aligning and/or tracking their strategy to planning or execution of work!
Two pie charts: 76% have goals, only 35% align strategy to execution

Misaligned work can lead to:

  • Decreased productivity

  • Profit loss

  • Stifled innovation

  • Reduced business agility

  • Stakeholder dissatisfaction

  • Decreased employee engagement

With so much at stake, why is work unaligned?
Because it is difficult to link, track, measure, and maintain the connection between strategic objectives and work.

The good news?

Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) and Clarity can guide you to success!

Hand holding open compass with blurred mountains and sky in background

A Quick Refresher: What is Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)?

SPM is a framework to achieve business value. It’s a strategy of best practices focused on:

  • Strategic Alignment. Ensure every initiative contributes to strategic goals.
  • Value Delivery. Focus on outcomes that drive customer and business success.

  • Process Agility. Continuously adapt to evolving needs.

The SPM pyramid displays how organizational strategy cascades down from high-level values into measurable goals, initiatives, and execution.

SPM Pyramid. Top to bottom layers: Values, Mission, Vision, Strategic Imperatives, Portfolio Management, Project Execution

(Image credit: Sanchez and Tadros 2023)

Want more SPM info? Check out: What is Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM)?

SPM Made Simple: Clarity’s Unique Advantages

Clarity software is ideally designed to support your SPM journey, providing:

  • Comprehensive data integration, creating a single source of truth.
  • Tools to align and prioritize work with your corporate strategy.
  • Flexible configuration of real-time reporting that supports informed decision making.
  • Scalable adaptation to fit your evolving business needs.

No matter where you are in the SPM journey, Clarity can help you align organizational strategy with daily work.

Quote from Clarity developer highlighting Clarity’s unparalleled flexibility in planning and modeling

Video Demonstration: Key Clarity Features that Support SPM

Blue banner graphic with the text “2030 VISION.” The word “VISION” appears in a dark blue horizontal bar across the middle. The “0” in “2030” on the right is replaced with a circular icon of a hiker using binoculars.

In the webinar, Unlocking Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM): Leveraging Clarity for Success, Clarity and SPM experts demonstrate how you can use Clarity to leverage SPM in your organization.

Demo Use Case – “My 2030 Vision”

This demonstration shows how a fictional Global Tech organization embraced SPM and established their 2030 Vision, using Clarity’s Custom Investments and Hierarchy module.

Please note:

  • All “Configured Examples” do not come standard, but they can easily be configured using the resources at regoXchange.
  • The Hierarchy module is immediately available out of the box (OOTB) with Clarity.
  • Power BI reports can be configured using regoXchange resources.
  • This demonstration is just one way you can utilize Clarity for SPM. Your method will be unique. Therefore, the videos should be used as inspiration, not a fixed solution.

1. Configured Custom Investments Example – Strategy, Mission, and Vision

  Video: See how Clarity’s Custom Investments can be configured as the essential starting point of SPM: Strategy, Mission, and Vision, as well a selection of Strategic Frameworks.

SPM Purpose: Define Values, Mission, and Vision

The top of the SPM pyramid labeled from top to bottom: "Values," "Mission," and "Vision."

SPM begins with strategic structuring to establish a clear, top-down framework for business priorities. This structure equips you to align all investments, goals, and execution efforts.

Clarity’s Custom Investments are powerful tools that provide you with control and flexibility to shape your SPM framework, making strategy execution clear, connected, and easier to manage. Custom Investments offer adaptable functionality to bridge the gap between strategy and execution. As priorities shift, you can track value delivery and successfully adapt with data-driven insights.

Screenshot of Clarity showing strategic vision content for '2030 Vision', with core values listed and a strategy diagram

Key Features of Custom Investments

  • Flexible Structure to Match Any Business. Custom Investments can be configured to match any organization’s strategy.

  • Align Strategy with Full Traceability. Easily track how portfolios, projects, and investments connect to strategic goals, ensuring a direct link between high-level strategy and day-to-day execution.

  • Integrated Navigation and Reporting. You can easily access key data and configure OOTB channels to integrate other tools, such as Power BI reports.

  • Real-Time Insights for Informed Decision Making. Data trends and exceptions are revealed to help you ensure teams are working on the right initiatives and stay aligned with business goals.

  • Adaptable and Scalable. Custom Investments support different levels of maturity, from simple goal tracking to complex strategic frameworks. You can adjust investment structures with simple configurations.

2. Configured Custom Investment Example – Imperatives and Goals

Video: See how Clarity’s Imperatives and Goals can foster strategic alignment and actionable insights.

SPM Purpose: Bridge Strategy and Execution with Precision

The middle of the SPM pyramid: "Strategic Imperatives," "Strategic Goals," "Strategic Initiatives (Programs and Projects)"

A key to SPM success is full traceability – connecting strategic goals with execution-level investments (portfolios, projects, products, and financials) – in a structured, measurable way.

Clarity’s Custom Investment Imperatives and Goals serve as the critical “middle layer” of SPM strategy, helping you connect, prioritize, and evaluate the best initiatives to drive strategic direction. With a measurable focus point, you can determine priorities, track progress, and ensure every initiative aligns with strategic intent and produces valuable results. When priorities shift, you are equipped to remain flexible and adapt to changing needs.

Clarity dashboard with pie charts and goals related to the 2030 Vision. Colored rows show status of strategic goals

Key Functionality of Imperatives and Goals

  • Define and Structure Business Priorities. You can ensure that strategic priorities are clearly structured and actionable.

    • Imperatives can be configured as overarching strategic themes.
    • Goals can be configured as measurable objectives under each Imperative.

  • Link Strategy to Execution. Imperatives and Goals can be directly linked for visibility and accountability, ensuring that every initiative, project, and financial allocation connects to a defined goal.

  • Real-time Visibility and Adjustments. Empowered with clear visualization of performance data – such as goal progress, investment distribution, and real-time business impact – you can focus on your highest-value investments.

  • Scalable Framework. Imperatives and Goals can be modified, added, or reorganized without requiring complex system changes or IT involvement. Your organization can start with simple goal tracking and expand to detailed OKRs, KPIs, and/or performance metrics as your SPM practice matures. When leadership reorganizes strategic priorities, teams can reclassify, repurpose, or merge Imperatives and Goals without starting over completely or losing historical data.

3. Configured Custom Investment Example – Objectives and Key Results (OKR)

Video: See Clarity’s versatile OKR functionality, including nested tables for a clear overview of all objectives and goals, OKR board layout, a dive into an under-performing objective, a review of a single key result, OOTB To-Do’s, Target Value, and Actual Value.

SPM Purpose: Align Goals with Measurable Outcomes

SPM Pyramid. Focus on: Strategic Imperatives, Strategic Goals, Strategic Initiatives, Portfolio Management, Project Execution

SPM requires organizations to define clear OKRs that align with their long-term goals. OKRs bridge the gap between goals and outcomes. OKRs can be tied to multiple layers of the SPM framework.

Clarity’s Custom Investment OKRs provide a structured yet flexible approach to managing OKRs, giving you the control and flexibility to define strategic priorities, measure progress, and drive execution within a single platform. Unlike rigid OKR tools, Clarity’s Custom Investments enable teams to configure and refine OKRs to fit their unique business needs, ensuring that strategy and execution remain fully aligned.

Additionally, Clarity’s OKR functionality delivers actionable insights – from overall results to detailed objectives. Teams can track OKRs alongside key data points such as lessons learned, action items, and process improvements. This facilitates real-time collaboration and supports a culture of continuous improvement. Ultimately, this results in improved process automation, greater accountability, and enhanced decision-making at every level of the organization. 

Clarity OKRs view showing objectives, confidence, progress, key results, and strategic alignment by imperative.
Clarity OKR view of single objective’s progress, key results by owner, risk count, result table, and lessons learned.

Key Functionality of Objectives and Key Results

  • Define and Adapt OKRs. Teams can configure their OKRs to fit their business priorities, and adjust as needed when priorities evolve.

  • Link OKRs to Strategic Goals and Initiatives. OKRs in Clarity create a dynamic, two-way connection between strategy and execution – from top-down and also bottom-up. As organizations define strategic imperatives and initiatives, product and delivery teams can establish OKRs at lower levels to measure real impact. Once work reaches customers, OKRs help teams measure whether they’re achieving key outcomes and driving meaningful strategic change.

  • Real-Time OKR Tracking and Confidence Scoring. Risks can are identified and can be mitigated early by using confidence scores and progress tracking.

  • Interactive Dashboards for OKR visibility. For all objectives and goals, you gain an insightful overview. You can also drill down into valuable data in nested tables and board formats.

4. OOTB Hierarchy Module

Video: Learn about Clarity’s interactive Hierarchy module, including how to create and visualize hierarchical relationships between strategic goals, OKRs, and execution. You’ll see how progress can be tracked with confidence scores and real-time data. Learn how you can navigate dynamically from high-level strategy to individual key results and initiatives.

SPM Purpose: Visualize and Trace Strategic Alignment

SPM Pyramid showing strategy levels from top to bottom: Values, Mission, Vision, Imperatives, Goals, Initiatives, and Execution.

Effective SPM relies on a clear, structured view of how strategic objectives translate into actionable initiatives.

Clarity’s OOTB Hierarchy module provides a dynamic, interactive framework that links all levels of SPM. It offers traceability from top-level strategy to execution, empowers alignment, transparency, and data-driven decision-making.

Color-coded hierarchy chart showing the 2030 Vision linked to strategic goals, initiatives, and six green “orphaned” projects.

Key Functionalities of the Hierarchy Module

  • Visualize Strategy with an Interactive Hierarchy. You can see the big picture, connections, and key results within a multi-level breakdown. Orphaned components are easily identified and gathered at the bottom of the chart.

  • Consolidate and Align Goals, OKRs, and Investments. You can map OKRs and investments to strategic priorities, ensuring all initiatives support business objectives.

  • Monitor Progress with Real-Time Data. Using confidence scores, progress tracking, and financial data, the Hierarchy module measures the heath of strategic initiatives at every level.

  • Drill down from Enterprise Goals to Execution. With the Hierarchy module’s interactive functionality, you can dive into any area of interest.

  • Scalable and Configurable for Any Organization. The Hierarchy module can match any level of maturity, from simple to complex. You can configure and adjust hierarchy relationships as needed.

5. Configured Power BI Example: Financial Overview Report

Dashboard showing Value Stream Financials with cost/benefit trends, cost table, ROI metrics, and three pie charts by category.

SPM Purpose: Optimize Investment Portfolios

For maximum success, SPM requires real-time visibility into financial performance, ensuring that investments align with business objectives and expected returns.

Clarity’s Custom Investment Financial Overview Report (a Power BI tie-in) provides the financial transparency needed to maximize investment value and drive strategic success with a comprehensive view of financial performance across portfolios, projects, and strategic initiatives. It tracks budgets, costs, benefits, and ROI across initiatives. Additionally, you can compare planned vs. actual spending, analyze trends, and maximize investment strategies. With these actionable insights, you can optimize your portfolios and ensure every investment aligns with strategic, data-driven decisions.

⚠️ Remember: Accurate data leads to accurate decisions!

  • Real-Time Cost and Benefit Tracking. You can improve future planning with reports that show planned vs. actual costs and benefits across strategic investments.

  • ROI Analysis for Strategic Investments. With calculated ROI metrics, you can evaluate the effectiveness of your strategic initiatives.

  • Visual Insights with Dynamic Dashboards. Your decision making is enhanced with financial trends-over-time, interactive charts, tables, and KPIs.

  • Scalable and Customizable for Any Business Model. This flexible report supports tailored financial configurations to match your organization’s reporting structure and investment framework.

6. Configured Power BI Example: Strategy Guardrails Report

Lean Portfolio Guardrails dashboard with bubble chart by horizon, bar chart by capacity, and pie charts by strategy targets

SPM Purpose: Ensure Strategic Balance and Accountability

A key factor in SPM success is controlling investment allocation to maintain a balance between innovation, growth, and operational stability.

Clarity’s Custom Investment Guardrails Report (a Power BI tie-in) provides real-time insights into how finances and resources are performing within your guardrails, ensuring that investments drive the right balance of growth, innovation, and sustainability. You can visualize how investments align with strategic guardrails, such as planned spend profiles, priorities, and risk boundaries. By surfacing trends, exceptions, and areas of misalignment, this report fosters a deeper understanding of strategic execution and drives informed decision-making. Additionally, you can see how resources are distributed and ensure that strategic investments align with business priorities and financial constraints.
This report helps you learn from less-than-perfect previous outcomes, equipping you to evaluate planned vs. actual investments. For future projects, you can allocate funding appropriately across emerging initiatives, critical operations, and long-term strategic goals.

Key Functionalities of the Strategy Guardrails Report

  • Financial Guardrails for Investment Planning. This report ssists with budgeting and spending allocation by categorizing spending into capacity, horizon planning, and strategic initiatives. You can ensure investments align with your business priorities with customized financial constraints and structure.

  • Portfolio Guardrails for Investment Strategy. Ensure a balanced portfolio strategy by categorizing investments into evaluating, emerging, investing, extracting, and retiring, so you can get the right mix of new, growing, and sunsetting investments.

  • Capacity Management for Resource Allocation. You can easily compare target vs. actual results resource allocation across categories such as new features, maintenance, and technical debt.

  • Visual Insights for Strategic Planning. Gain visibility of your investment tracking, trends, and long-term strategy alignment with bubble charts, bar graphs, and pie charts that surface actionable insights and support informed financial decisions.

  • Adaptive Resource Allocation Across Investment Horizons. You can balance innovation and stability by shifting resources dynamically between innovation, scaling, and retiring initiatives based on performance data.

  • Scalable and Customizable Guardrails for Strategic Flexibility. Strengthen your strategic governance using guardrails to maintain financial discipline and investment accountability. You can define investment categories and set custom thresholds for financial and resource planning, adjusting as needed to match your goals.

7. Configured Power BI Example: Strategic Themes Dashboard

Clarity report with key results table, donut chart for attainment, and pie chart of storypoints by strategic theme.

SPM Purpose: Focus on High-Impact Priorities

SPM helps organizations prioritize investments that align with key business themes, aligning funding and execution with corporate strategy.

Clarity’s Custom Investment Strategic Themes Dashboard (a Power BI tie-in) transforms high-level strategy into actionable insights, ensuring that business priorities drive investment, execution, and measurable success. This high-level, visually rich view consolidates data across portfolios, programs, and projects to show you how investments are aligned with strategic priorities. You can track performance of key results, identify gaps, and integrate strategy with Agile execution. This dashboard empowers you to make data-driven decisions and optimize measurable outcomes.

Key Functionalities of the Strategic Themes Dashboard

  • Thematic Investment Alignment. Initiatives are categorized under strategic themes, so you can easily see if they are focused on business priorities.

  • Real-Time Key Result Tracking and Alignment. Portfolio visibility is improved. You can monitor key results with confidence scores, attainment percentages, and status tracking across strategic themes. This empowers you to take corrective action early.

  • Interactive Dashboard for Strategic Insights. Investment trends, strategic alignment, and execution progress are clearly displayed in bar charts, progress indicators, and pie charts. You can drill into any area of interest for additional details.

  • Scalable and Customizable for Business Priorities. As your organization evolves, you can refine custom strategic themes and track the financial and operational impact.

Get Started with SPM in Clarity

Video: See how Clarity’s flexible configuration options can support SPM, whether you need a simple setup or a fully detailed architecture.

Utilize these practical steps to begin your SPM journey with Clarity.

  1. Define clear top-level strategy and value to ensure alignment across your organization.
  2. Engage stakeholders in change management to drive adoption and collaboration.
  3. Start small to achieve quick wins early and build a scalable, sustainable framework.
    • Begin with foundational elements and expand as maturity increases.
    • You don’t have to have all the information, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. Clarity will help you refine your data as you go.
    • Remember: Any insight is a helpful insight!
  4. Break down strategy into actionable goals using Clarity’s features to efficiently drive execution.
  5. Periodically review and adjust your SPM framework to ensure alignment with business needs to maintain agility in dynamic environments.

Clarity can support your organization at any stage of SPM maturity!

Summary

Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM) is a framework of best practices that connects business strategy to work, ensuring every initiative aligns with organizational goals and delivers value.

Clarity empowers organizations to embrace a thriving SPM practice. With tools that consolidate data from multiple sources into goal alignment and real-time reporting, Clarity simplifies complexity. Teams gain data-based insights to make informed decisions, streamline processes, optimize resources, and track measurable outcomes.

Clarity’s flexible, low-code/no-code platform grows with your organization. So, whether you’re just starting your SPM journey or refining your approach, Clarity adapts to your unique organization and equips you for success.

Learn More

Enrich your SPM journey with Rego’s resources and expertise.

🚩Stay tuned! The next Rego webinar in the SPM series will be announced soon!

Get Help with Your SPM Journey

As expert SPM and Clarity guides, Rego Consulting can partner with your organization. They help large enterprises adopt best practices for strategic alignment, effective planning, monitoring, and evaluation. Rego offers a range of services including digital ecosystem assessments, coaching to define OKRs, revitalizing implementations, and managed support.

Check out the service offerings available to you!

Rego’s SPM Consulting Services

  • Project Planning and Strategy
  • Scope Management and Change Control
  • Resource Allocation and Management
  • Risk Identification and Mitigation
  • Stakeholder Communication and Reporting
  • And more!
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About the Author: Rego Consulting

As the leading Strategic Portfolio Management (SPM), Project Portfolio Management (PPM), Technology Business Management (TBM), Agile and expert services provider, Rego Consulting has helped hundreds of organizations achieve a higher return on their software investment, including 60% of Fortune 100 and 70% of Fortune 20 companies.

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