Portfolio
The Portfolio is the single source of truth for what the business sells and delivers. It contains the products and services, their pricing, the delivery standard for each, and the legal clauses specific to each product. Nothing is sold, delivered or committed outside it without written approval.
Why it sits at the centre
Every function in the model refers to the Portfolio, so no single function can own it. If sales owned it, it would drift towards whatever closes deals. If delivery owned it, it would drift towards whatever is comfortable to deliver. The Portfolio therefore sits outside the functional structure, with an executive sponsor who reconciles trade-offs and the board holding final accountability.
Without a well-defined Portfolio the Centres of Excellence cannot be built correctly, because there is no stable definition of the skills they need. Out-of-portfolio selling is the main way a services business sets its own delivery teams up to fail.
What it must contain
The Portfolio has to be detailed enough that anyone discussing a product, whether in sales, Customer Success, delivery or finance, describes it the same way. For each offering it records:
- functionality, scope and known limitations
- delivery standard and performance metrics
- pricing, structured on the three-layer model where AI carries variable cost
- the approved cost model and acceptable risk bands
- product-specific contract clauses and acceptable use boundaries
- data handling constraints and regulatory classification, including EU AI Act risk mapping where relevant
- the support model, including ongoing optimisation requirements
- the capability each Centre of Excellence needs to deliver it
Who contributes
Each function feeds the Portfolio with what it is best placed to know:
- Centres of Excellence: deliverability, capability mapping, assumptions and the support model.
- Finance: margin thresholds, the method for forecasting consumption costs, and acceptable risk bands.
- Customer Success: onboarding and support requirements, and what a Customer Success Manager needs to know to run the account.
- Sales: market intelligence, meaning what customers ask for, what competitors offer and where pricing is under pressure.
- Legal and compliance: contract clauses, acceptable use, data handling, regulatory classification and incident response.
- IT: infrastructure fit, security requirements and cost allocation.
- Leadership: reconciling trade-offs and giving formal approval.
Keeping it current
A Portfolio manager maintains the Portfolio in a standard format so that every function works from consistent definitions. New technology is added once leadership approves it. Technology that is no longer strategic is removed, and where that leaves a Centre of Excellence without a purpose, the centre is closed and its members are retrained for another centre where possible.
Changes to the Portfolio also tell the Centres of Excellence where training is needed, because the capability each centre requires is defined by what the Portfolio contains.
Non-standard requests
When a customer asks for something the Portfolio does not cover, it goes to Portfolio governance as a request, on an expedited basis. Leadership decides whether to add it, and only after finance has confirmed it is profitable and the relevant Centre of Excellence has confirmed it can be delivered. Sales can raise these requests, and should, because they are the clearest signal of what the market wants.