The waterline analysis feature enables you to conduct a sophisticated analysis of a project group on the Portfolio Analysis and Capacity Planning pages in the Portfolios section. A waterline is a visual modeling tool you can use to force rank projects into two groups by sorting and applying a constraint limit.
Display a Waterline
You can display a waterline on any scorecard view on the Portfolio Analysis page and in scorecards on the Capacity Planning page. When you display a waterline, the projects in the scorecard are sorted into two separate groups based on the defined sorting and constraint limit. The projects above the waterline are those that collectively meet the constraint limit value; all other projects appear below the waterline.
After displaying a waterline, you can quickly create a new portfolio containing the projects that meet your waterline criteria.
Waterline Example
As an example, you may have a project portfolio that includes more projects than you can fund. You might want to rank the projects by strategic priority and then select only those projects that fit within your current budget.
To do this, define a waterline with:
- A limit on Current Budget; this
limit represents the total amount you can budget for all projects. For
example, if you only have a total of $1,000,000 to allocate for all projects
in a portfolio, define a constraint limit as follows:
Parameter Is Value Current Budget Is Less than or equals $1,000,000
- An ascending sort order by Strategic Priority; the ascending sort order will list your projects with the highest priority first.
When displayed in the scorecard, the waterline creates a forced ranked
list of projects with the highest Strategic Priority that would fit within
your $1,000,000 budget.
Web Access sums the Current Budget amounts for projects, in
ascending order of Strategic Priority, until the total Current Budget
sum reaches $1,000,000. Once the sum reaches $1,000,000, the waterline
is drawn. Projects above the waterline, displayed in a white background,
are those with the highest strategic priority whose collective, or aggregate,
Current Budget is less than or equal to $1,000,000; all other projects, displayed
with a light blue background, appear below the waterline.