ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the elements of a typical portfolio, and how they fit together in the portfolio's composition. The obvious 'ingredients' of a portfolio include its projects and programmes, and the virtual 'container' in which these assets reside. But it is also necessary to consider the structural mechanism that provides the means and method of control for accepting, retaining and rejecting the projects and programmes in the portfolio. Furthermore, there are also less obvious but important ingredients in the complete list of components that make up a successful portfolio. The products of a portfolio are temporal, which in practice means that the duration of programmes and projects inside the portfolio are bounded by start and end points in time. However, the dynamic nature of business environments and their contexts mean that the precise start and end points of projects and programmes can be difficult to pin down.
