I found that the three terms: "program", "project portfolio" and "multi-project" have large overlappings in the concepts they refer to and at the same time they are different. This is my perception of the following concepts based on the academic litrature and my experiences:
In ocnstruction industry the differences between a project and a program is well known. A program is a package of projects which all together satisfy an objective. For example the construction of the Terminal 5 in Heathrow Airport(London) is a program. It consist of many projects which may be linked or not to each other but the final objective is to provide travel services to the passengers and Airliners in the this airport.
The term "project portfolio" is mostly heard when looking to the organization from finance and from strategic perspective. There are businesses which their operations are in the form of projects. These projects are not neccessary related to each other but they all together creat revenues for the company. Imagine a company like Arup. This engineering compnay is involved in many projects around the glob which are some related and some unrelated to each other. The main discussion when it comes to project portfolio is about how to select the best projects, what combination of the projects are best for the company profitibility and the scheduling of the projects to best utilize the company capacities.
Multi-project is usually refers to the environments where different projects in a company have something in common; for example the location, the resources, the business and so on. However I admit that this term is confounding in meaning with the "project portfolio" and program. This term is usually used by the practitioners and researchers when they are talking about the projects in micro level/operations level. Usually the questions of complexity, productivity, team work problems, communication, planning and control problems are mentioned in connection to multi-project environements.
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