Portfolio plans in Strategic Planning

  • Release version: Australia
  • Updated March 12, 2026
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of Portfolio plans in Strategic Planning

    Portfolio plans in Strategic Planning enable planning managers to align work with company objectives by creating personalized plans using different lenses (perspectives). These plans help define goals, set targets, and roadmap work to ensure strategic alignment across various organizational levels. Planning managers can create multiple portfolio plans from different viewpoints, visualize progress, and share insights with stakeholders to drive shared strategy and improve enterprise planning.

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    Key Features

    • Custom portfolio plans: Built per planning manager using specific lenses like Strategic Investment or Organization, allowing tailored views such as initiatives or departments.
    • Goal and target setting: Define strategic goals and roadmap work to meet these objectives effectively.
    • Multiple perspectives: Create and manage multiple plans to visualize work and progress from different organizational viewpoints.
    • High-level planning support: Roadmap strategic items like Initiatives, Strategic Programs, Programs (pmprogram), and Product Enhancements that span multiple business units or departments.
    • Hierarchy view: Drill down from high-level strategic items to detailed planning items like epics, projects, and demands aligned with goals.
    • Configuration flexibility: Use default lenses or work with administrators to enable high-level planning for additional item types and set up required lenses.

    Practical Benefits for ServiceNow Customers

    • Facilitates focused planning within desired perspectives to prioritize the right work aligned with business strategy.
    • Reduces time and effort spent aligning execution teams with strategic objectives.
    • Provides visibility into how strategic initiatives and programs connect to lower-level work, supporting informed decision-making.
    • Enables collaboration and communication with stakeholders through shared, visual portfolio plans.
    • Supports enterprise-wide planning by integrating multiple business units and departments under common strategic goals.

    Next Steps

    ServiceNow customers should collaborate with their administrators to configure lenses and enable high-level planning as needed. Begin creating portfolio plans to align work with company strategy using Strategic Planning Workspace, leveraging the tools to manage goals, visualize progress, and drive enterprise planning.

    Personalized portfolio plans help you align work with your company's objectives and roadmap the right work for the right time. Drive shared strategy using planning insights from portfolio plans and improve enterprise planning.

    Portfolio plans overview

    Portfolio plans are custom plans per planning manager that are built using a lens. They enable planning managers to define goals, set targets for these goals, and then roadmap the work to ensure alignment between goals and the planned work.

    A strategy leader using the Strategic Investment lens plans in the perspective of initiatives, and a department head using the Organization lens plans in the perspective of a department.

    As a planning manager, you can create multiple portfolio plans using different lenses. Visualize the plans and progress of work from different perspectives and share them with stakeholders.

    Using portfolio plans, you can:
    • Enable focused planning of work in the desired perspective (lens).
    • Prioritize the right work and improve alignment with business strategy.
    • Reduce the time spent on aligning execution teams to the right work.

    High-level planning using portfolio plans

    In Strategic Planning, you can roadmap work for your organization at a high level by building portfolio plans for strategic items such as initiatives. High-level planning items usually span across multiple business units, departments, or portfolios of a company. These strategic work items help you further breakdown a company's priorities.
    • Initiative: Used to achieve long-term goals. Initiatives are designed to create a sustainable competitive advantage for the organization. They often involve large-scale effort that requires coordination and collaboration across multiple departments or business units.
    • Strategic Program: Used to achieve specific milestones and outcomes of an Initiative.
    • Program (pm_program): Used to achieve milestones and outcomes of a program.
    • Product Enhancement: Used to plan and achieve feature enhancements for digital products.

    Using the Hierarchy view, review the work pipeline and drill down to the low level planning items that are associated to your strategic item.

    For example, as an EPMO, you can view the epics associated to each initiative. Also, you can view and manage the goals that these initiatives are aligned to.

    By default, you can use Initiatives or Strategic Programs from the Strategic Investments lens or Programs (pm_program) from the Project Program lens to create high-level portfolio plans. See Create a high-level portfolio plan.

    If you need high-level planning enabled for items other than Initiatives, Strategic Programs, Programs (pm_program), work with your ServiceNow admin to complete the additional configuration. See High-level planning configuration in Strategic Planning.

    Here's a sample portfolio plan that shows a few strategic programs of the company and the low-level work (projects and demands) that are aligned with them.High-level portfolio plan hierarchy view.

    Work with your administrator to ensure the required lens setup. See Lens configuration in Strategic Planning.

    Start creating portfolio plans to align work with strategy. See Managing portfolio plans in Strategic Planning Workspace.