Nonsuch - How understanding what's driving your portfolio matters

This slide set is about trying to understand what's driving each and every project in your portfolio of projects and programmes. This is important to help understand how you might prioritise your projects when faced with constraints around affordability, alignment to strategy, and achievability. I created this IP to help Leadership Teams more quickly and simply understand some of the issues they need to consider before making a decision. For example, understanding which projects are discretionary versus non-discretionary is key to working out which other projects we might be have to stop or slow down to allow the projects tagged 'Mandatory' to carry on unimpeded to ensure we are compliant to industry or legal requirements. I'm happy to chat about this 'until the cows come home' (meaning anytime anyplace! :))

1. The Royal Flush of Portfolio
Management
How understanding what’s driving your project will impact
how you approach governance, the business case and
portfolio prioritisation
Prepared by:
Youssef Mourra
Founder, Principal Consultant -Central
[email protected]
021 423 620

2. What are the odds of a Royal Flush in Poker?
The royal flush is a variation on the straight flush. It can be
formed 4 ways (one for each suit), giving it a probability of
0.000154% and odds of 649,739 : 1.
What should the odds of holding the right portfolio of
projects be in business? Should it be a gamble at all?
Holding the right collection of projects (or portfolio) in the
organisation is a sure way to ensure you have the balance right.
Think of it as holding a Royal Flush, the winning cards.
It’s a memorable way to think about the question ‘do we have
the right mix of projects in our organisation’?
The Royal Flush of Portfolio Management
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3. MANDATORY
‘THINGS WE MUST DO'
MAINTENANCE
‘KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON’
TACTICAL
‘CORRECTIVE PROJECTS'
•MUST do because of
reasons related to
legislation or compliance
•We have little choice or
discretion in decision
making
•Get on and understand
what options are available
and just do it
•SHOULD do to maintain
existing systems, operations
and business processes
•If under-invested in for too
long, we run the risk of
breaking or seriously
degrading our existing
operations and systems
•If over-invested in, we may
not get the best overall
returns
•COULD do due to changes
in the competitive,
technological or global
environments.
•Do as a response to
something or as a minor fix
for something currently
existing.
•Often have a sense of
urgency but not high in
importance
•MIGHT do because of new ideas
and/or innovations driven from
our clients, employees, expert
sources or disrupters.
•Need to investigate, approve,
reject or invest in these
innovations and make these
decisions quickly. There is no time
to lose as these projects
potentially represent
transformational opportunities.
•HAVE to do if we wish to
achieve our strategic vision.
•Often identified years out
and need to be delivered in
a methodical fashion,
governed and monitored
carefully because of their
importance.
INNOVATION
‘TRANSFORMATIONAL'
STRATEGIC
'LONGTERM PROJECTS'
Planned
These are the broad project classifications that all projects fall into. The onus is on the leadership team in your organisation to understand whether they have
the right mix of projects to achieve strategic outcomes.
.
OPTION
OPPORTUNISTIC
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4. These are the broad project classifications that all projects fall into. The onus is on the leadership team in your organisation to understand whether they have
the right mix of projects to achieve strategic outcomes.
.
MANDATORY
‘THINGS WE MUST DO'
MAINTENANCE
‘KEEPING THE LIGHTS ON’
TACTICAL
‘CORRECTIVE PROJECTS'
•COULD do due to changes
in the competitive,
technological or global
environments.
•Do as a response to
something or as a minor fix
for something currently
existing.
•Often have a sense of
urgency but not high in
importance
INNOVATION
‘TRANSFORMATIONAL'
STRATEGIC
'LONGTERM PROJECTS'
Planned
OPTION
OPPORTUNISTIC
September 2025 © Nonsuch Consulting Page 4
The Wildcard

5. ?
Filtered
out
initiatives
Filtered
out
initiatives
Filtered
out
initiatives
? ?
?
Gate 1 Gate 3Gate 2 Gate 4
VISION
The Royal Flush of Portfolio Management
Therefore the art of
portfolio
management is to
encourage all ideas
and all project
proposals and then
kick off a process of
weeding out the
ones that don’t
offer us the
strategic value that
we desire. This is
called Portfolio
Prioritisation.
Ultimately, if it’s
done correctly and
periodically, then
we are always
holding the Royal
Flush. This is called
Portfolio
Optimisation.
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6. INNOVATION
STRATEGIC
TACTICAL
MAINTENANCE
MANDATORY/COMPLIANCE
VISION
Gate 3Gate 2Gate 1
Filtered out
initiatives
Filtered out
initiatives
Filtered out
initiatives
New Ideas
New Project Proposals
Handover to BAU
Detailed Business Case
Option Analysis
Strategic Prioritisation
Initial Business Case
Impact Analysis
Early Prioritisation
Gate 4
Execution
The Royal Flush of Portfolio Management
Dependent on the
project’s
classification, we
may dispense with
certain gates or
Governance. For
discretionary spend,
we need to develop a
Business Case to
understand the
return of investment.
On the other hand, a
mandatory project
may not need to go
through the navel-
gazing aspect of
discretionary spend
(shall we, shan’t we)
but rather go straight
to Options Analysis
where we focus on
how we do it.
September 2025 © Nonsuch Consulting Page 6

7. Want to know more?
Please contact Nonsuch Consulting Services – www.nonsuch.co – on [email protected]
Youssef Mourra, Founder & Principal Consultant – ([email protected])
Sarah Gill, Principal Consultant – ([email protected])
Chris Fisher – ([email protected])
September 2025 © Nonsuch Consulting Services Page 7