How-To Note: Strategy-Level Portfolio Review

Portfolio reviews are opportunities for Missions to periodically examine designated aspects of the Mission’s strategy, projects, or activities. Per ADS 201.3.2.18, Missions must conduct at least one portfolio review per year that focuses on progress toward strategy-level results. Missions may conduct additional portfolio reviews, such as semiannual portfolio or project-level reviews, and the objectives, content and format of these additional portfolio reviews may vary depending on the needs of the Mission.

Portfolio reviews play an important role in a Mission’s ongoing learning and adapting, serving as a pause and reflect moment for the Mission to generate and apply new learning across a broad range of programmatic and operational approaches. Missions may also leverage portfolio reviews to further enhance strategic collaboration and stakeholder engagement, to strengthen knowledge transfer among staff and partners, and to address organizational practices and culture to better enable adaptive management.

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This How-To Note supplements ADS 201.3.2.18. It presents guidelines and recommended practices in planning and implementing a mission-wide strategy-level portfolio review. These guidelines and practices can also be adapted for Washington based Operating Unit portfolio reviews as well as project- and activity-level reviews conducted by Missions. The primary audience for this guidance includes program officers, monitoring and evaluation specialists, learning advisors, and technical officers involved in conducting a portfolio review.

Use the complementary Portfolio Review Findings Summary template and the Evaluation Summary Findings template as tools to track lessons learned (through both the Portfolio Review itself as well as through an analysis of evaluations completed), map their links to learning priorities and questions, and identify what actions have been taken to address any of the issues or what actions need to be taken in the future to redress problems or fill knowledge gaps.