The portfolio review that leadership dreads is the one where twelve program managers each present their program for ten minutes. By the end, the room knows a lot of things and has decided nothing. That is a status meeting with a longer agenda.
A portfolio review that produces decisions starts by surfacing trade-offs, not status. What am I doing that I should stop. What am I not funding that I should start. What is blocked in a way that requires leadership to unblock it. Those are the agenda items. Status is the pre-read, not the discussion.
The format I use is a one-page portfolio view before the meeting: each program, its health, its top risk, and whether it needs a leadership decision. Anything green with no decision needed is not discussed in the room. Time goes to the things that are not green or that need something only leadership can give.
At Atlassian, I ran quarterly business reviews that followed this format. The first time, leadership expected the standard parade of presentations. When I spent the first thirty minutes on three specific trade-off decisions instead, the room was quieter than usual in a way that meant they were thinking, not waiting for their turn to speak. Two of those decisions led to real program changes within the week.
The goal of a portfolio review is not to demonstrate that programs are being managed. It is to improve the portfolio. Those are different goals and they produce different meeting designs.