Key actors in portfolio uncertainty management

The first research question was “What actors participate in portfolio uncertainty manage-ment?”. This study reveals a high number of active participants in portfolio uncertainty management, as both case companies reported approximately 10 key actors during the interviews. These key actors previously presented in tables 12 and 15 are compiled in table 17 below. In addition, a separate column has been added for actors presented in the literature review (table 5) to allow comparison between the empirical data and previ-ous literature. Actors arising from the literature review and both case companies have been highlighted green in the actors column, whereas actors reported by both case com-panies but not presented in the previous literature are highlighted blue.

Table 17. Summary of key actors participating in portfolio uncertainty management

Actors Literature review Company A Company B

Project managers and team members X X X

Project steering group X X

Program managers and team members X X

Program steering group X

Portfolio managers and team members (incl.

sub-portfolio managers) X X X

Portfolio steering group X X X

Product council and other similar boards X X

Company specific teams

(e.g. sales, product management) X X

Middle management X X X

Senior/top management X X X

Board of directors X

The business owner/controller X

Chief Risk Officer X

Change control board, cheetah teams or other

temporary groups X X

Customers X

Other third parties X

Based on the empirical data, the role of project managers and project team members is essential in project portfolio uncertainty management. These actors bear the main re-sponsibility for project level uncertainty management, with a focus on uncertainties with relative low severity arising from single projects. Although these actors are authorized to make decisions relatively independently, significant decisions are escalated to the port-folio managers or the product council when necessary. This finding therefore supports previous literature by emphasizing project managers’ responsibility in single project risk management (Teller, 2013), and the need to share relevant project status information utilized in portfolio management (Beringer, Jonas and Kock, 2013).

Both case companies also organize project steering meetings in order to support the project teams in their daily operations and review the progress of the project. These project steering groups are especially important forums for decisions related to project termination, delaying and resource reallocations. Hence, project steering groups may practice innovation project portfolio uncertainty management by reconfiguring the port-folio content relatively autonomously. Due to this, this study highlights the essential role of project steering groups even though such project steering meetings were not explicitly mentioned in previous literature in terms of portfolio uncertainty management.

In addition, Company A reported similar practices on program level, where the program manager typically bears the primary responsibility for program uncertainty management, participates in program steering groups and ensures that all necessary projects are in-cluded in relevant innovation project portfolios. These findings are for the most part aligned with Blomquist's and Müller's (2006) study, where the responsibilities of program managers included participating in steering groups, project prioritization and coordina-tion, and handling of possible issues to name a few.

This study also emphasizes the significant role of portfolio managers and their corre-sponding team members including sub-portfolio managers in practicing innovation pro-ject portfolio uncertainty management. This finding is aligned with the previous studies highlighting the key role of these actors (Blomquist and Müller, 2006; Jonas, 2010; Teller, 2013; Martinsuo, Korhonen and Laine, 2014). In addition, the empirical data supports the importance of frequent portfolio steering meetings in monitoring the portfolio status and developing uncertainty responses in terms of portfolio reconfiguration, as has also been previously proposed by Jonas (2010). Whereas Company B typically organizes such portfolio steering meetings only once a year and with a highly strategic agenda, Company A organizes these meetings on a monthly basis and focuses both on opera-tional and strategic issues.

The product council holds the highest decision-making power related to the product of-fering in both case companies. Hence, all significant strategic decisions related to the innovation project portfolio reconfiguration need to be ran through the product council to finalize the decision. Hence, the product council and other high-level steering boards such as a technology board at Company B also actively participate in portfolio uncertainty management especially when significant uncertainties arise. Such board members in-clude various internal portfolio stakeholders ranging from the top and middle manage-ment to portfolio managers. In addition, at Company B the sales team has a high deci-sion-making power in these meetings due to their extensive knowledge on the opportu-nities arising from changing customer needs and hence could be classified as an active participant in innovation project portfolio uncertainty management. However, none of these actors have been explicitly mentioned in the previous portfolio uncertainty litera-ture.

In addition to the sales team, it seems that company specific teams even outside the direct scope of portfolio, program and project managers and their corresponding team members may be included in innovation project portfolio uncertainty management. For example, the identification of external uncertainties was assigned to product strategy and management team at Company A and product management team at Company B. Addi-tionally, some representatives from the middle-management including specific team heads and mid-level line managers were seen as active participants in certain steering groups practicing innovation project portfolio management.

Top management turned out to also be a significant actor in practicing innovation project portfolio uncertainty management. Due to the strategic nature of innovation project port-folio management, this finding is not exactly surprising. Just like middle management, top management interacts with the project portfolios mainly through certain steering meetings and aims to guide the strategic direction of the portfolio. Top management therefore takes the role of a final decision-maker in terms of portfolio uncertainty man-agement, as previously proposed by Teller (2013). Hence, their role should not be over-looked in terms of innovation project portfolio uncertainty management. In addition at Company B, the board of directors were also seen as active participants in innovation project portfolio uncertainty management, as the board accepts the budgets for large innovation projects with high strategic importance, and guides the strategic direction of the company alongside with the top management.

The business owners, chief risk officers, change control boards and cheetah teams were not explicitly mentioned by the interviewees from neither case companies. However,

Company B does occasionally establish temporary research groups for identifying exter-nal uncertainties influencing the strategic objectives of the innovation project portfolio or the whole company. Lastly, whereas customers and possible other third parties were deemed as important stakeholders for innovation project portfolios in both companies, neither companies reported risk transferring to these external stakeholders. Hence, these stakeholders are not marked in table 16 as active participants in innovation project portfolio uncertainty management.

To conclude, the role of five actors in innovation project portfolio uncertainty manage-ment was highlighted in the literature review and both case companies: project and port-folio managers with their corresponding team members, portport-folio steering groups, middle management and top management. In addition, the empirical research revealed three new categories of actors outside the literature review, that participate actively in portfolio uncertainty management in both case companies: project steering groups, product coun-cil and other similar boards and company specific teams such as sales, product man-agement and product strategy and manman-agement. Hence, this study emphasizes the com-plex nature of portfolio uncertainty management, where multiple different actors are ac-tively involved in innovation project portfolio management.