Once a quarter the leadership team meets and walks the roadmap. Each owner presents progress. Reds get attention. Greens get a nod. Three hours pass and the team leaves feeling diligent.
What didn't happen: nobody asked whether any of the items still deserve to be on the list.
The difference
- Roadmap review: Are we on track to deliver what we said we would? — A delivery question.
- Portfolio review: Given what we now know, should we still be doing this? — A capital allocation question.
The first is operational. The second is strategic. Most leadership teams have time on the calendar for the first and none for the second, then wonder why the portfolio is full of inherited initiatives nobody can explain.
What a real portfolio review looks like
- Each initiative is re-justified against the current strategy, not the strategy that existed when it started
- Initiatives that no longer map are killed, not "deprioritised"
- Freed capacity is explicitly reallocated, not absorbed
- The default answer is stop, and continuation requires argument
The Vindaris view
If your quarterly review can't kill anything, it isn't a portfolio review. It's a status meeting in nicer clothes.