Best practices for levels of approval during Demand vs Portfolio Planning

[JulianaVCUH]

Hi everyone,

We’re in the process of fully implementing SPM and trying to clarify the definition of “Approved” in the Demand lifecycle. What level of approval should occur during the Demand phase, and when should Portfolio Planning workflows begin?

Previously, before we had SPM, Demand served as our only approval gate. As a result, our teams have been expected to obtain full approvals within the Demand phase — including resource review, funding approval (executive/steering committee), roadmap timing, contract signatures, and security assessments.

However, this approach is difficult to truly get right —and I assume now that capacity planning, funding alignment, and roadmap analysis—are part of the Strategic Portfolio Planning workspace and therefore final approval occurs later. It feels premature to finalize funding or timing before seeing the entire portfolio context.

My questions are:
Is best practice to wait to “approve” a demand only once all those details (funding, resources, timing, etc.) are finalized?
Or does “Approved” in the Demand lifecycle simply mean the demand has passed concept/advisory review and is strategically aligned to enter Portfolio Planning for detailed scoring, prioritization, funding approval, and capacity analysis?

Do you convert the demand to the execution record upon demand approval or wait to convert to the execution record after portfolio planning, scoring, funding approval, resource / capacity planning? 

Thanks in advance for any insights or examples of how your organization handles this!

— Juliana

[JayanthiHCL]

We assign Demand Task to respective group 
1. Initial review of business requirement

2. Architecture design

3. Resource, capacity and financials

4. Qualify and approve 

[goldenjc97]

It's my understanding that best practice is to think of "Approval" in the Demand phase as a conceptual endorsement rather than a final green light for all the tactical details like funding, resources, and exact timing. We use an Intake Approval Board to review the demands and have the SMEs present the demand.