Building basic familiarity and expanding professional horizons beyond project management: projects, programmes and portfolios in 2026

Ian Clarkson – Senior Director, PRINCE2 - PeopleCert

In 20-plus years working in the project, programme and portfolio industry – both as a practitioner and trainer – I’ve never seen the industry booming as it is now.

From a UK perspective, there are major projects in the pipeline, including nuclear developments at Sizewell C and the latest government plans for improving rail connectivity in the north of England, namely Northern Powerhouse Rail.

This makes the need for projects, programmes, portfolios – and the skilled professionals to run them – even greater.

But how prepared are organizations and their people for such demands to manage change successfully? While the level of capability and maturity in organizations tasked with managing so-called mega projects is more advanced, maturity varies within smaller organizations..

And one of the critical areas lacking is an understanding of the structures that operate beyond projects, i.e., programmes and portfolios.

This matters because of the respective role of each management discipline:

● Portfolio management
This is about organizations investing in the right places, which means prioritizing one change initiative over another based on business need and resources. With budgets under pressure, a focus on cost and imperative for return on investment, portfolio management is there to help organizations make the right decisions on what to do

● Programme management
Some still think that a programme is just a big project. It isn’t. Rather, a programme leads multiple interrelated projects and other work to progressively achieve outcomes that deliver benefits for one or more organizations.

The portfolios, programmes and projects chapter of the UK Government’s Teal Book – guidance for managing these initiatives in government – offers useful advice when thinking about each discipline: “It is important that the context and the work needed are explored first… to decide the most appropriate management approach to apply. This helps to stop the mindset of thinking in terms of whether something is a portfolio, programme or project and instead start thinking in terms of whether something is best managed as a portfolio, programme or project”.

Persistent issues in managing change initiatives

Sponsorship:
Project sponsors are accountable for the success of a project and benefits realization.
Because of the accountability element, sponsorship tends to need the involvement of a senior leader or executive, though not all come from a project background; they therefore need to understand the typical project/programme/portfolio governance to know how to operate and behave in a consistent manner.

Consistency:
Distinguished project management author Harold Kerzner’s advice to “adopt a project management methodology and use it consistently” highlights another enduring issue in organizations.

They might adopt a project management approach but fail to use it consistently, either through incomplete roll-out or lack of embedding it within the organization.

What needs to improve is the transition from working in one way to working in a new way. This needs effort, time and attention to change (people) management to help embed the new ‘modus operandi’. And yet the tools to make it happen are there, for example in PRINCE2 Programme Management.

Business cases:
Often, organizations need to be better at stopping change initiatives that no longer stack up against the business case. But to make that decision, the business case needs to be clear and comprehensive. This links back to portfolio management and having clarity on what an organization wants to invest in in the first place.

The AI factor

According to a recent McKinsey report, most organizations are still in the experimentation or piloting phase with AI, with nearly two-thirds of respondents saying their organizations have not yet begun scaling AI across the enterprise.

That said, project, programme and portfolio managers can’t ignore AI and how it could impact the profession. It offers a positive challenge and opportunity to use the technology, but not at the expense of fundamental understanding of best practice approaches.

If organizations are still in the pilot phase of adopting AI, I think they should be asking how its eventual adoption will translate into people using it in projects in a more sophisticated way than just, for example, recording meeting notes. And while issues such as poor leadership and poor sponsorship can’t be solved by AI (yet), it is more likely to increase the efficiency of tasks such as monitoring, controlling and managing communications tools.

Similar to the debate around the use of agile delivery methods in projects, AI provides another possible “arrow in the quiver” to help in the running of a project. However, people need the skills to use AI consistently and organizations will need the necessary culture to adopt and tailor it.

Agile and AI have a place, but they are not the silver bullet. Each still needs governance and culture wrapped around it – and that is fundamentally about the role people play.

Investing in individual and organizational improvements in 2026

Building the necessary capability and maturity into projects, programmes and portfolios should begin with basic “literacy” across all of the disciplines, and not only for those with project, programme or portfolio in their job title

This means making sure enough people in supporting roles understand the basics and how they contribute to each type of change initiative.

And I believe there is an ongoing case for professionals to expand their training/certification beyond project management.

For example, a project manager could be running a project which is only one of many in a programme. Therefore, by gaining programme management knowledge as well, it’s possible to understand the overarching governance, reporting lines and documentation.

But progressing from project to programme and portfolio management is also about career development for individuals. And as organizations begin to understand the value and necessity of running programmes, they need more people with the skills and knowledge to run them.

The advantage of selecting guidance and certifications from the PRINCE2 portfolio is the common language and concepts between them. Having access to integrated methods provides a natural progression: organizations can tap into a wealth of best practice knowledge that may link to what they already know and use, or start with and tailor to their own context.

The ability to deliver change more effectively and efficiently is, above all, a competitive advantage. Whether that’s a better use of public money to deliver mega projects or everyday services, or to enable a company to bring a product to market more quickly.