This article aims to understand the adjustment stage of project portfolio management, highlighting its relationship with the processes of categorization and balancing. It is a qualitative research. The longitudinal case study approach was adopted. The research was carried out in a Brazilian chemical company. Several sources of evidence were collected through interviews, documents and data from the enterprise's systems. Data from 1,000 projects between 2001 and 2005 were collected and analyzed in order to understand the project portfolio. The results indicated that more attention is given to the selection stage, neglecting the adjustment stage. The adoption of balancing tools showed gaps and sources of imbalance in the project portfolio, promoting discussion among decision makers regarding the bias introduced by the criteria in the selection stage and raising the need to introduce systematic adjustment and balance. It was possible to observe that without a proper project categorization, it would be difficult to promote the balancing analysis.
Portfolio Management; Project selection; Balance; Portfolio adjustment; Bubble chart
