The agreement of a set of objectives should be part of the Annual Balance of Investment settlement, and should therefore be set, reviewed and adjusted on an annual basis. These should be separate from any objectives or outcomes associated with individual change initiatives and apply across to the portfolio in its entirety.
Examples might include: reducing operational costs, reducing a specific type of risk (e.g. cyber), expanding usage and reach (adding new users), exploiting new technologies, etc.
The delivery of these objectives may follow several different paths. For example, they could be delegated to the sub-portfolios within the portfolio to manage and deliver as part of their management and governance, with the portfolio maintaining an assurance role. These sub-portfolios (or the portfolio itself) could choose to deliver these (if appropriate) through a dedicated change initiative (or set of related change initiatives). They could require some innovation effort and could in some cases be delivered through small changes across multiple Delivery Teams. It is up to the portfolio to determine the most appropriate response and to track and manage progress.
It is recommended that Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are considered as a starting point for thinking about how to structure the measures of progress and success.