Despite rising defence budgets, programme leaders are still struggling with timely delivery. At Epicflow, the Dutch project portfolio and resource management software company founded by researchers and experienced project management practitioners, they see the core constraint differently. “The real bottleneck faced by enterprises is no longer funding, but limited availability of skilled resources,” explains Dr. Ir. Albert Ponsteen, Epicflow’s co-founder.

Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 26, 2026 -- As geopolitical pressure intensifies across Europe, defence organisations must deliver complex programmes faster, without assuming that larger budgets alone will solve delays. Responding to this challenge, Epicflow has begun trialling its AI-powered Portfolio Optimiser with the Dutch Ministry of Defence, positioning it as a value-optimised orchestration layer for constrained specialist capacity.

Despite rising defence budgets, programme leaders are still struggling with timely delivery. At Epicflow, the Dutch project portfolio and resource management software company founded by researchers and experienced project management practitioners, they see the core constraint differently. "The real bottleneck faced by enterprises is no longer funding, but limited availability of skilled resources," explains Dr. Ir. Albert Ponsteen, Epicflow's co-founder.

This constraint-first view shaped the Epicflow AI Portfolio Optimiser (www.epicflow.com/ai-portfolio-optimiser), recently released AI functionality that prioritises and sequences work according to actual resource limits and projected business value. In Epicflow's new positioning, EPO moves leaders beyond generic visibility toward value per constrained hour: which scarce hour should be spent where, what delay costs, and which bottleneck task moves next.

"There should be a shift in thinking, from ‘doing it all' to doing what is truly important," notes Ben Rawson, portfolio management professional and strategic partner of Epicflow. "EPO helps leaders clearly identify which projects deserve investment and ensures that every hour contributes to measurable value."

To test this operating model in practice, Epicflow partnered with a major defence programme run by the Dutch Ministry of Defence. The collaboration involved an experiment within a $1B multi-year programme that faced significant delays across numerous initiatives. Epicflow was applied to the first batch of projects to test whether finite-capacity portfolio orchestration could improve outcomes in this complex, shared-resource environment.

The first results were remarkable. Project lead times were reduced by more than 30%, and due date performance improved by up to 300%, all without increasing headcount. The experiment was recognised by the MOD as a major success: their highest-value projects could be delivered more than 400 days earlier than previously expected.

Reflecting on the experiment, Dr. Ponsteen states:

"We didn't push teams to work harder. We changed how work was prioritised. When you align portfolio decisions with business value and actual resource constraints, overload disappears and performance improves dramatically. So, the real question in portfolio management isn't how much budget you have. It's whether your limited resources are focused on projects that deliver the greatest value."

In the current global context, that shift is strategically important for defence organisations and other mission-critical industries. Epicflow's new positioning frames EPO as part of a broader Value Management Office approach: exposing hidden constraints, monetising delay, and turning finite specialist capacity into a competitive advantage. Where scarce engineers, approvals, dependencies, and delivery commitments determine performance, value-driven and resource-centric prioritisation becomes the key to faster delivery.

About Epicflow

Epicflow is a portfolio resource management software company founded in 2017 and headquartered in Amsterdam, Netherlands. The company develops enterprise project and portfolio management solutions for organizations operating in resource-constrained, multi-project environments. Epicflow's platform supports portfolio planning, execution, bottleneck control, and resource orchestration across concurrent projects.