Project portfolio success determinants: a dynamic capability perspective

Purpose This study reconceptualizes project portfolio management (PPM) through dynamic capabilities (DC) theory, explaining how sensing, seizing, and transforming routines co-evolve to sustain strategic alignment and adaptive portfolio performance. Design/methodology/approach An integrative review of 66 peer-reviewed studies (1999–2024) identifies and classifies 26 success determinants (SDs) by DC domains (sensing, seizing, transforming, or cross-cutting microfoundations) and analytical role (antecedent, routine, mediator, outcome), producing a mechanism-view framework of portfolio success. Findings Portfolio success emerges from the simultaneous, mutually conditioning operation of sensing, seizing, and transforming domains, not from isolated practices or structures. Effects on performance are indirect, channeled through mediating capability states, such as decision effectiveness, management quality, and portfolio agility, and reinforced by cross-cutting microfoundations of leadership, culture, and stakeholder engagement. Two feedback pathways sustain renewal: a primary loop reshaping sensing capacity through lineage management and strategic recognition, and a secondary loop recalibrating seizing through portfolio reviews. The integrative framework consolidates these relationships into a single, empirically grounded, and directly testable architecture of portfolio capability. Research limitations/implications The synthesis reflects a field dominated by cross-sectional surveys. Five SDs, learning orientation, strategic recognition, structural alignment, transformational leadership, and individual managerial traits require large-scale quantitative verification, and the feedback pathways remain temporally undocumented. Longitudinal and process designs are the priority. Practical implications Portfolio success is sustained by the quality of feedback, learning, and integration routines, not governance structures alone. The three DC dimensions are interdependent: chronic underinvestment in both sensing and transforming erodes adaptive capacity that seizing cannot restore. As turbulence rises, sensing and transforming investments are likely to become proportionally more critical. Portfolio managers and steering committees govern different parts of this system and must coordinate to prevent capability compression under pressure. Originality/value The paper presents a novel mechanism-view framework that classifies project portfolio SDs by both their dynamic-capability domain and their functional role in the causal chain, turning a fragmented catalog of factors into a coherent, testable architecture of portfolio success.