How many projects before consolidation becomes worthwhile?
Two, as soon as they share a steering committee. Below that, the Team plan is enough:
the portfolio view only saves time if there are actually several sets of figures to
reconcile before a meeting. The question is not the number of projects but the number
of summary spreadsheets produced each month.
Do all projects need to be at the same level of maturity?
No, but financial consolidation only rolls up what exists. A project with no declared
budget and no story point estimation appears in the programme roadmap and not in the
financial roll-up. That follows from how the figure is computed, not from a licence
limit: earned value is derived from delivered points, it cannot be invented.
Can the programme roadmap edit several projects at once?
No. As soon as two projects are overlaid, the view becomes read-only and changes are
made in the project concerned. This is deliberate: an editable multi-project roadmap
would let one person move another team's milestone without that team being told.
How do I feed an existing dashboard?
Through the REST API v1 and the documented Power BI connector. Keys carry restricted
scopes and an expiry date, and portfolio endpoints return consolidated indicators
already computed: there is no need to redo the EVM calculation on the dashboard side,
which is precisely where discrepancies between two reports come from.
Does a member of a single project see the portfolio?
No. Consolidation only aggregates projects where the signed-in person actually has
access to the relevant section. Two people opening the same page at the same moment
may therefore see two different totals, and that is the expected behaviour.